Caceres Luis Rene’s scientific contributions

This paper investigates the determinants of tax evasion by exporting firms in a sample of Latin American countries. After a review of the selected literature, the paper presents the results of the estimation of equations that explain this type of tax evasion in terms of variables related to corruption and business climate. Among the most outstanding results are that tax evasion decreases with the government’s capacity to control corruption and with economic growth, while it increases with the opening of the economy, inflation, and the expansion of credit to the private sector. The paper also discusses other aspects of tax evasion, such as its role in the homicide rate and remittances. The paper concludes with a series of conclusions and recommendations.

This paper investigates the determinants of corruption and the effects of certain variables on corruption. The variables that have marked incidence of corruption are, among others, increases in imports, in the shadow economy, self-employment, the interest rate, and the trade deficit, while corruption has a negative incidence on economic growth, exports, wage employment, and productivity, and others. Using principal component analysis new indicators of corruption and anti-corruption were developed, which were validated by comparing them with the World Bank’s control of corruption index. The paper presents the main elements of a regional strategy to combat corruption and ends with a series of conclusions.

This paper analyzes the characteristics of economic crises in Mexico and Central America, emphasizing their causes and persistence. The results indicate that the crisis defined as the contraction to negative values of economic growth rates in the countries under analysis are not persistent, but the crises originated by the contraction of the US growth rate are persistent. The analysis also addresses the effects of the crises on other variables, finding that they have an impact on the increase in unemployment, remittances, the underground economy, violence, and the fall in productivity. In other words, the original crisis gives rise to the emergence of other crises, which are the ones that explain the economic cycle. The implication is that economic recovery after the crisis, and the shielding of the economy from being affected by crises, requires investments in social development and governance, as well as the protection of the productive sectors. In turn, these investments determine the business cycle. The paper concludes with a series of considerations on appropriate policies to shield economies from external shocks and to achieve early recovery.

This work investigates the associations between increasing the quality of education, and the control of corruption, violence and emigration. Models are presented whose estimations show that increasing the quality of education is a means to achieve improvements in the rate of economic growth, in probity, as well as to reduce the homicide rate and discourage emigration. The work emphasizes the importance of increasing taxation with a view to increasing social spending and demonstrates that increasing tax collection leads to increasing the rate of economic growth. The work ends with a series of conclusions and recommendations.

This paper aims to identify the macroeconomic variables that determine the female and male suicide rates in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Costa Rica, using panel data from the 2000-2018 period. The results show that macroeconomics exerts important effects on suicide, especially those effects originating in the labor market: unemployment and self-employment increase it while salaried employment and in the service sector decrease it. Likewise, variables associated with social exclusion, such as homicides and the poverty gap, increase it, while remittances reduce it, and deindustrialization increases the suicide rate. Of particular importance is the role of monetary and credit contraction, as well as interest rate rises, in increasing the suicide rate. The paper explores some adjustment mechanisms that do not rely on monetary contraction but on increasing aggregate supply by increasing female employment The paper ends with a series of conclusions.

This paper depicts three mechanisms through which fiscal policy affects economic growth in the Dominican Republic. The first mechanism rests on the evidence that increasing public expenditures on education leads to the reduction of adolescent fertility and the percentage of young females who neither study or work, which gives rise to increasing the ratio of female to male employees and thus increasing domestic savings and economic growth. The second mechanism consists of increasing social expenditures, which results in decreasing the underground economy and, thus, results in increased productivity, economic growth, and reduced violence. The third mechanism is based on the evidence that increasing education expenditures leads to the reduction of emigration and, thus, to the reduction of remittances, which in turn increases economic growth. The operation of these mechanisms is sustained by Figures that show that the postulated relationships exist in the Dominican Republic. The results imply first, that fiscal policy has important effects that have often been overlooked, such as the reductions in school desertion, the percentages of female and male youth that neither work nor study, and the decrease in informality in the Dominican Republic. And second, a valid development strategy resides in increasing tax revenues to support the expansion of social services.

The objective of this article is to analyze, in the Dominican Republic, the impact of monetary policy on labor market variables disaggregated by gender. The results indicate that the expansion of credit and money favor the growth of female employment and female participation to a greater degree than male, which leads to an increase in the ratio of female to male employment and leads to an increase in domestic savings. and economic growth. It is shown that the female-to-male employment ratio reduces external vulnerability and inflation, homicide and suicide rates, and is a mechanism for the transmission of monetary policies.

This study analyzes the determination of the deindustrialization process experienced by Mexico and the Central American countries, and the repercussions on employment, domestic savings, investment, and economic growth. The methodology consists of estimating VAR models with panel data from the 1990-2018 period. The results indicate that the percentage occupied by the manufacturing sector in GDP increases in the face of shocks to exports, investment, and the ratio of female to male salaried employment, and does not have a significant response to the increase in remittances. A measure of relative deindustrialization is introduced, defined as the ratio of the value-added of the manufacturing sector to imports, whose responses to shocks to exports and remittances are negative, but its response to salaried employment is positive. Faced with shocks to the ratio of female to male salaried employment, the responses of the domestic saving rate, per capita international reserves, and labor productivity was positive, but the response of the trade deficit was negative. These results show that deindustrialization must be analyzed in the context of the labor market of the countries and consider gender aspects.

This paper analyzes the macroeconomic repercussions of the existence of idle youth in a cross-section of Latin American countries. The results indicate that idle youth has a close association with the indices of gender inequality and governance, and with informality. By estimating a series of equations, it was possible to infer that idle youth exerts adverse effects on economic growth, the domestic saving rate and economic vulnerability. It is also reported that the prevention of idle youth rests on substantial increases in tax revenues so as to increase social spending.

This paper investigates the dynamics of Mexico’s economy after the signing of the NAFTA treaty. It is reported that Mexico, the United States and Canada have experienced low rates of economic growth as a result of the deindustrialization processes they have undergone, which has been a consequence of the tariff reductions. Tariff reduction has also affected employment, especially female industrial employment, with adverse consequences on domestic savings, trade balance and economic growth. Additional analysis is related to cointegration tests of the employment ratios, as well as to the existence of principal components among the three countries’ employment to population ratios. The paper investigates the effects of declining employment to population ratios in the three countries, reporting that in Mexico female employment has increased to compensate the declining tendencies of labor productivity and male employment ratio. The paper ends with a proposal regarding the launching of the North American Social and Dignity Pact.