Latin America’s history has been marked by episodes of high inflation and economic crises, leaving lasting imprints on the region’s economies. Mexico represents a compelling case, given its recurrent periods of inflationary volatility. This paper examines whether such experiences continue to shape expectations today. Specifically, it investigates whether past inflation episodes in Mexico affect individuals’ current views about future price dynamics, using an Inflation Exposure Index (iei) that weights years according to the intensity of inflation each person has lived through. To address this question, the study relies on microdata from the Encuesta Nacional sobre Confianza del Consumidor (enco), conducted by the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (inegi). Respondents are asked how they expect prices to behave over the next 12 months compared with the previous 12 months, with answers ranging from 1 (“decrease a lot”) to 6 (“increase a lot”). Employing an ordered probit model, the results show that individuals with greater exposure to high-inflation periods are more likely to predict that prices will “increase a lot.” Moreover, the analysis uncovers heterogeneity: women, older respondents, and those with lower educational attainment tend to hold more pessimistic views about inflation. The findings align with existing literature on the persistence of inflationary memories and highlight their policy relevance. Understanding how demographic and experiential factors shape expectation formation is crucial for central banks, as these dynamics complicate the management of credibility and the transmission of monetary policy, while underscoring the need for communication strategies tailored to diverse groups of economic agents.
This paper studies intergenerational mobility into the middle class in Mexico, emphasizing the role of territorial origin alongside family background. Using the ESRU–EMOVI 2023 survey and an income-based definition of economic classes consistent with recent thresholds for Latin America, we analyse both access to the middle class and to the top incomes. Parental circumstances are captured through a multidimensional class approach: first, using variables on assets, education, occupation, and social protection; then, using a cluster-based classification that combines these variables. Moving beyond the standard rural–urban dichotomy that dominates much of the existing literature, we adopt a more granular territorial perspective. It simultaneously accounts for the size of the locality where individuals lived at age 14 and the population size of the main urban core that anchors their functional territory. This method allows us to capture spatial gradients in opportunity that remain invisible in conventional classifications. Our main finding is that mobility prospects do not follow a simple urban-size hierarchy: individuals raised in urban localities within large-core territories (350,000–1 million) consistently exhibit the highest probabilities of upward mobility, exceeding those observed in large metropolitan areas. Census-based evidence suggests that this advantage reflects higher levels of formal employment, social protection, and economic diversification in these territories, highlighting the central role of intermediate cities in inclusive mobility dynamics.
Este estudio tiene como objetivo identificar los determinantes que influyen en la salida o la permanencia en empleos de salarios bajos en México. Para ello se emplea la Encuesta Nacional de Ocupación y Empleo (ENOE) entre 2012 y 2019, seleccionando a los individuos que tenían empleos de salarios bajos y dándoles seguimiento un año después. Se estima un modelo logit multinomial, que permite obtener efectos marginales promedio sobre tres posibles trayectorias: desempleo/inactividad, permanencia en salarios bajos o mejora salarial. Los resultados muestran que la educación y la formalidad incrementan la probabilidad de movilidad ascendente, mientras que el género femenino, la edad avanzada y ramas como el agropecuario y los servicios refuerzan la permanencia. Se concluye que la movilidad salarial depende no solo de características individuales, sino también de factores estructurales del mercado laboral, lo que plantea implicaciones relevantes para las políticas públicas.
This article examines how the expansion of criminal organizations in Mexico affects different forms of violence through a gendered lens. Using an event-study design with data on homicides, feminicides, and missing persons disaggregated by gender, I exploit the entry of the first cartel into a municipality to estimate its causal effects. The results show that cartel entry significantly increases homicide rates for male victims but has no statistically significant effect on female homicides or feminicides. In contrast, missing persons rates rise sharply for both men and women, with particularly pronounced increases among adolescent and young adult women. Additional analysis reveals that the entry of a second cartel further increases missing persons rates but does not affect homicide or feminicide rates. Robustness checks using the onset of the war on drugs confirm the main findings. The article contributes to conflict studies by integrating gender perspectives and by identifying missing persons as a critical yet understudied outcome.
En este artículo se analizan los efectos del crecimiento económico, la apertura comercial, la inversión extranjera directa (IED) y el consumo de energía sobre las emisiones de CO2 en Canadá, Estados Unidos y México. El estudio emplea modelos autorregresivos con rezagos distribuidos (ARDL) y pruebas de causalidad de Granger, utilizando series de tiempo anuales para el periodo 1970-2023. Los principales hallazgos sugieren que: 1) el consumo de energía está asociado con aumentos en las emisiones en los tres países; 2) la hipótesis de la curva ambiental de Kuznets (CAK) solo se valida en Canadá; 3) los flujos de IED incrementan las emisiones contaminantes en Canadá y México; 4) la apertura comercial contribuye a reducir las emisiones únicamente en México, y 5) el análisis de causalidad evidencia que la relación entre las actividades económicas y las emisiones varía según la estructura productiva de cada país. Estos resultados subrayan la importancia de diseñar políticas diferenciadas para promover un crecimiento y desarrollo sostenible en la región.
