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92. Economic Survey of Mexico, 2003
- Publication Date:
- 11-2003
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
- Abstract:
- Fiscal rectitude, progress towards macroeconomic stabilisation, and past structural reforms have been necessary and desirable, but have not yet been sufficient to raise potential growth to rates that would allow closing the gap in living standards with other OECD countries. Prolonged cyclical weakness, with no unambiguous signs yet of a vigorous upturn, has depressed private investment, which is also hampered by legal and regulatory obstacles in key sectors, electricity in particular. Mexico's catching-up is further hindered by low human capital accumulation. The administration has insufficiently solid and stable revenue to finance necessary social spending and public infrastructure investment on the required scale. Policies should therefore give priority to broadening the tax base and creating conditions - economic, financial and legal - in which a competitive private sector has the ability and incentives to invest more. It is also important to spend more productively in areas such as education; efforts there should concentrate on making the existing school system, and the teaching body, more effective, and on allocating more resources to the training of adults. Although the large informal sector provides a kind of safety valve for many of the low-skilled, the formal sector must become a more attractive place in the longer term in which to work and to employ. Emigration also provides a safety valve, and remittances lift many households out of acute poverty. A migration agreement between the United States and Mexico would bring benefits to both. Levels of water and air pollution are unacceptably high in Mexican urban areas, and though policies are addressing this, the (implicit or explicit) pricing of natural resources and of polluting activities is far from optimal. Overall, Mexico needs to move ahead with comprehensive structural reforms, including most immediately approval of the tax, electricity and labour reforms, so as to fully release the country's growth potential and provide resources to deal with important issues of human capital and poverty relief.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Economics, Environment, Human Rights, International Organization, and Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- Mexico
93. What the Cancun Meeting Can Achieve
- Author:
- Claude E. Barfield
- Publication Date:
- 09-2003
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
- Abstract:
- As the WTO Ministerial Meeting opens in Cancún, Mexico, conflict surrounds the agenda. U.S. negotiators must find a balance between compromise and assertiveness to overcome soured U.S.-EU relations and should push for a sharp reduction in agricultural trade barriers, increased liberalization in the service sectors, and reductions in the remaining tariffs on industrial products.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Foreign Policy, Democratization, and Economics
- Political Geography:
- Central America, North America, and Mexico
94. Picking Up the Pieces: Comparing the Social Impact of Finacial Crisis in Mexico and Argentina
- Author:
- Manuel Pastor and Carol Wise
- Publication Date:
- 10-2003
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for International Studies, University of Southern California
- Abstract:
- After a committed process of macroeconomic stabilization that began during the mid-1980s in most of Latin America, many observers began to speak of the need for a “second generation” of reforms that could more firmly establish the bases for economic growth and correct for longstanding distributional inequities. By the mid-1990s serious reformers like Argentina and Mexico seemed to be on the cusp of tackling this distributional backlog by launching so-called second phase market reforms meant to correct for earlier shortcomings in the social realm (Naím 1995; Pastor and Wise 1999). However, in both cases, financial crises erupted: Mexico's crash of December 1994, which saw a forty percent devaluation of the peso and a massive outflow of portfolio capital; and, more recently, Argentina's 2002 meltdown, which while simmering since the Brazilian devaluation of 1999, finally caused the country's commitment to a fixed exchange rate to be abandoned.
- Topic:
- Economics and Government
- Political Geography:
- Brazil, Argentina, South America, Latin America, North America, and Mexico
95. North American Economic Integration Policy Options
- Author:
- Earl H. Fry
- Publication Date:
- 07-2003
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Strategic and International Studies
- Abstract:
- At the end of 2003, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) will have been in effect for a decade, and although the accord will not be fully implemented for another five years, almost all of its important provisions are already in place. The model for NAFTA was the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA), which was put in motion in 1989 and was to be fully implemented within 10 years but was superseded by NAFTA after only five years in operation. NAFTA itself has created the world's largest free-trade area, encompassing the United States, Mexico, and Canada; 21.3 million square miles of territory; 422 million people; almost $12 trillion in yearly production; and $615 billion in annual three-way merchandise trade. North American trade, investment, government-to-government, and people-to-people exchanges have increased dramatically over the past decade and decisionmakers in Washington, D.C., Mexico City, and Ottawa will soon have to consider whether continental economic integration should move to the next level in the form of a customs and monetary union or even a common market possessing many of the attributes of the European Union (EU).
- Topic:
- Economics and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- United States, Europe, Canada, Latin America, Central America, North America, Mexico, and Ottawa
96. Mexico and the WTO: A Regional Player in Multilateral Trade Negotiations
- Author:
- Antonio Ortiz Mena
- Publication Date:
- 03-2003
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
- Abstract:
- This working paper assesses the impact of the Uruguay Round Agreements of multilateral trade negotiation (MTN) on Mexico and determines the priorities of business and government for an upcoming round of MTN. It draws on secondary sources as well as interviews with business organizations representing Mexico' most important export industries and import-competing sectors. It proceeds as follows: the first section gives an overview of trade polity reforms since 1982; section two covers Mexico's regional trade agreements with special emphasis on the North American Free Trade Agreement; the third section provides and outline of Mexico's current trade policies; the fourth section consists of an assessment of the costs and benefits of Mexico's current World Trade Organization commitments' the fifth sections sets out the views of government and business on a new round of MTN; and the sixth section concludes.
- Topic:
- Security, Economics, and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- North America and Mexico
97. Bankers into Brokers: The Structural Transformation and Opening of Mexico's Financial Markets
- Author:
- Susan Minushkin
- Publication Date:
- 03-2003
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
- Abstract:
- Mexico's financial market opening demonstrates how this domestic logic interacts with international condition. The following case study of Mexican financial opening makes the following contentions. First, financial market opening in Mexico did not begin in the 1980s, as commonly believed. Rather the process has its roots in a conflict among sub-sectors of the financial services industry, between powerful oligarchic bankers (banqueros) and financial entrepreneurs based on the bolsa (bolseros). The conflict, dating from the 1960s, was a purely domestic affair and was not the result of increased international capital mobility and financial marked opening in OECD countries. Nevertheless, this conflict led to a structural change in the financial service industry congruent with changes in the international financial system from bank-based financing to increasing securities market-based financing.
- Topic:
- Economics, Emerging Markets, and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- North America and Mexico
98. Policy Reform in the Mexican Telecommunications Sector
- Author:
- Miguel Ángel Valverde
- Publication Date:
- 02-2003
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
- Abstract:
- In June 1990, Presidents George Bush and Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari announced their intention to begin negotiating a free trade agreement. Canada joined the negotiations the following August. The proposed North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) provoked an intense lobbying campaign in the U.S. Congress, in what became a major political battle for its congressional approval.
- Topic:
- Economics, Government, and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- Africa, Canada, Central America, and Mexico
99. Clientelism in Flux: Democratization and Interest Intermediation in Contemporary Mexico
- Author:
- Blanca Heredia Rubio
- Publication Date:
- 02-2003
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
- Abstract:
- The buoyant optimism spurred by the rush to democracy throughout Latin America along with the high, even if less widespread, hopes about market reform of the last decade have given way to a different mood. The excitement associated with large scale social change has subsided and a certain disillusionment, a hangover of sorts, has begun to set in.
- Topic:
- Civil Society, Democratization, and Economics
- Political Geography:
- Latin America, Central America, and Mexico
100. Foreign Policy Strategies in a Globalized World: The Case of Mexico
- Author:
- Guadalupe González
- Publication Date:
- 02-2003
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
- Abstract:
- This document analyses the impact of the end of the Cold-War, and the processes of economic and political liberalization on Mexico's foreign policy. The first section identifies the consequences for the so-called intermediate countries of the three most important post-Cold War trends: the emergence of hybrid structure of global power, the wave of globalization, and the growing importance of international institutions. The second section evaluates the explanatory value of three systemic approaches to the study of the foreign policy of intermediate states: systemic-structuralism, middle powers, and pivotal states. In the third section, I evaluate Kahler's alternative approach centered on the interaction between systemic and domestic variables, in particular on the foreign policy consequences of economic liberalization and democratization such as the adoption of external cooperative strategies and the deepening to engagement with international institution. The fourth section describes the main changes that have taken place in Mexico's foreign policy during the 1990s: pragmatism, primacy of economics, closer alignment with the United States, segmented multilateralism, fragmentation of the decision-making process, and new instruments. There are two arguments in this document. First, in contrast to other intermediate liberalizing countries, Mexico's efforts to adapt to the new post-Cold War international system, followed an uneven and partial pattern. While Mexican political leaders pursued the full integration of the country to the international economy, in the security realm they maintain a less than open policy based on the defense of the traditional notion of sovereignty. Mexico's partial adaptation is explained by the different pace of the raid economic reform on the one hand, and the gradual and slow opening of the post-revolutionary political regime, on the other. Second, as Kahler's model predicted, Mexico adopted strategies of cooperation and institutional engagement in order to solve credibility roblems. The need to enhance the credibility of the programs of economic reform pushed the Mexican government to engage actively with economic international institutions.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Economics, and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- Africa, United States, Middle East, North America, and Mexico