Business School

The industries in which listed firms are concentrated in less developed equity markets are not random, nor entirely explained by the underlying composition of production. Listed firms and market capitalization are disproportionately concentrated in industries with low beta (measured with their beta with the market portfolio in the U.S.). We document a strong positive relationship between the industry-weighted country beta and the degree of market development across countries. Recent IPO activity confirms the result since new listings have higher betas than the average firm already in the market.

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

Part of the rationale for NAFTA was that it would increase trade and foreign direct investment ( FDI) flows, creating jobs and reducing migration to the U.S. Since poor data on illegal flows to the U.S. make direct measurement difficult, this paper instead evaluates the mechanism behind these predictions using data on migration within Mexico where the census data permit careful analysis. We offer the first specifications for migration within Mexico incorporating measures of cost of living, amenities and networks. Contrary to much of the literature, labor market variables enter very significantly and as predicted once we control for possible credit constraint effects. Greater exposure to FDI and trade deters out-migration with the effects working partly through the labor market. Finally, we generate some tentative inferences about the impact on increased FDI on Mexico-U.S. migration. On average, a doubling of FDI inflows leads to a 1.5-2% fall in migration.

This paper studies the spatial dimension of growth in Mexico over the last three decades. The literature regional economic growth has shown a decrease regional dispersion from 1970 to 1985 and as sharp increase afterwards coinciding with the trade liberalization of the Mexican economy. Using spatial econometric tools we analyze how the process of convergence/divergence has mapped spatially and whether it makes sense to talk about spatial regions in Mexico. Although the rich North/ poor South dichotomy has, overall, dominated this phenomenon, interesting patterns emerge. Namely that the distribution of growth after Mexico's post liberalization seems to be much less associated to distance to the US than initially expected.

Part of the rationale for NAFTA was that it would increase trade and FDI flows, creating jobs and reducing migration to the US. Since poor data on illegal flows to the US makes direct measurement difficult, this paper instead evaluates the mechanism behind these predictions using data on migration within Mexico where the census data permit careful analysis. We offer the first specifications for migration within Mexico incorporating measures of cost of living, amenities and networks. Contrary to much of the literature, labor market variables enter very significantly and as predicted once we attempt to control for substitutions vs. credit constraint effects. FDI and trade variables deter migration and appear to work through the labor market. Finally, we generate some tentative inferences about the impact on Mexico-US

Standard parametric tests of convergence cannot capture whether the increased dispersion among state incomes is due to a steepening gradient between north and south, a few hot states randomly distributed, or as an intermediate position, the emergence of convergence clubs. This paper tests for spatial dependency in income levels and growth rates before and after the trade liberalization of 1985. Looking at levels of income per capita, we clearly identify a "South," but there is no "North" or "Center." Beyond the frontline states on the US border, we immediately enter an area as poor as the South and incomes in the central zone itself are almost randomly distributed geographically. Growth shows little evidence of spatial dependency in any period: There is only weak evidence of a South and none of a North. A strong co-movement of Chiapas and Oaxaca emerged in the 1995-00 period, but it had little historical precedent and whether it will continue cannot be foreseen. * Our thanks to Daniel Lederman, Miguel Messmacher, and Raymond Robertson for helpful discussions. We also thank Gabriel Victorio Montes Rojas for extraordinarily patient research assistance. 1 el norte es el que ordena…pero.. con su esperanza dura, el sur también existe 1 Benedetti.

El microcrédito es una industria creciente en el Latinoamérica y Brasil y Chile no están ajenos a este proceso. Sin embargo, no existe evidencia sólida de cuales son los efectos e impactos que estos programas tienen sobre sus clientes y especialmente sobre la pobreza. Aunque, se ha sostenido que es una herramienta eficiente para reducir los niveles de carencia de la población.

We have revisited the research about Chilean regional convergence. Using a set of tools from the spatial econometrics we find support for the most of the previous conclusion in the literature about this topic. However, we find some new evidence about the convergence process that is taking place in Chile. This says that in the last decade had been an increasing divergent process of growth of the Gross Regional Product (GRP) per cápita, where the spatial dependence had played an important role in the formation of two clusters. One in the north of the country (Regions I, II and III), and it is characterized by high rate of growth (hot spot). The other is in the south and it has low growth rate (Region VIII, IX and X). We used the Global and Local Moran's I, the Moran's Scatterplot and a spatial error model with fixed effects and all of them give strong evidence that support this conclusion.

The main objective of this paper is to measure the impact of the mining sector on the Chilean II region and evaluate the conditions that affect the magnitude of this impact. Using an Input Output matrix for the II region, we calculate the impact on output, income and employment. Later, we compare the impact on the labor market between private and state owned firms, showing that there is a significant difference in the management system of each firm that results in different costs and benefits for regional development. There also are important differences in impacts associated with fly-in fly-out workers from other regions that are partially measured by the multipliers.

The main objective of this paper is to measure the impact of the mining sector on the Chilean II region and evaluate the conditions that affect the magnitude of this impact. Using an Input Output matrix for the II region, we calculate the impact on output, income and employment. Later, we compare the impact on the labor market between private and state owned firms, showing that there is a significant difference in the management system of each firm that results in different costs and benefits for regional development. There also are important differences in impacts associated with fly-in fly-out workers from other regions that are partially measured by the multipliers.

From the perspective of results in terms of growth as a whole, Latin America and particularly some countries of the continent are experiencing an economic stage that could be described as fairly pleasant. There are, of course, differences among countries, but several of them have reported GDP growth rates of over 4 % in real terms since 2000. The impact of the international economic-financial crisis had its worst manifestation in 2009, when Brazil, Chile, Venezuela and especially Mexico reported real negative rates in the variation in their GDP. However, in 2010, all of them returned to very positive rates of expansion (7.44 % in Brazil; 5.2 % in Chile; 5.39 % in Mexico; 4.13 % in Bolivia and over 8 % in Peru and Uruguay). This put the average real growth in the region for 2010 at around 4.1 %, which was estimated to have increased two more decimals in 2011 and would only decrease to slightly below 4 % in 2012. 1 As some reliable reports have suggested, Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) confirmed its economic power in 2012 because the region was capable of resisting international economic instabilities and maintains expectations of growth of 3.5-4 % for the next 2 years. 2