México: evolución económica durante 2007 y perspectivas para 2008

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Istmo Centroamericano: estadísticas del sector manufacturero y de la industria de exportación (datos actualizados a 2007)

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El mercado laboral rural en México: caracterización y agenda de investigación

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México: evolución económica durante 2008 y perspectivas para 2009

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Capital flows to Latin America: recent developments

The external environment has deteriorated sharply as a result of the spiraling financial turmoil, and has led to a weakening in commodity prices and fears of a worldwide recession. Latin America and the Caribbean's fastest expansion in 40 years may be threatened as the global credit crunch makes financing scarce and squeezes demand for the region's commodities. This time around the region is better positioned to weather the crisis than in the past, given improvements in macroeconomic and financial policies as well as a reduced net dependency on external capital inflows. However, Latin American markets are feeling the effects of the crisis through a slowdown in capital inflows, large declines in stock price indexes, significant currency adjustments and an increase in debt spreads. Volatility has soared, with the closely watched Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index moving to an all-time high of 70.33 on October 17, indicating that fear (rather than greed) has been ruling the markets.After reaching record lows in May 2007, emerging markets bond spreads are now above pre-Asian crisis levels. The JPMorgan EMBI+ Latin American composite widened by 146 basis points in the third quarter, with spreads reaching 448 basis points at the end of September. Spreads have widened sharply in recent weeks as foreign investors cut back regional exposure for the safety of U.S. Treasuries. The ongoing lack of liquidity and subsequent liquidation of assets is leading to a collapse in asset prices and a sharp widening in spreads. Daily spreads in October have risen to levels not seen since December 2002, making it much more difficult for governments that need financing to get it. Risk premiums for Latin corporates and sovereigns have risen substantially, but have remained well below U.S. junk (high-yield) bonds. Latin corporates are facing a steep rise in foreign exchange borrowing costs (although less than firms in other emerging markets), which raises concerns that refinancing risks will climb.So far, emerging markets vulnerabilities have been more focused on corporates, as sovereigns have improved public debt dynamics and countries' financing needs are under control. Market performance has been driven by the rapid deterioration of emerging markets bank and corporate market, as well as ongoing losses in emerging markets equities. From January to September 2008, the Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) Latin American Index lost almost 28%, while the Emerging Markets Index lost 37% and the G-7 Index lost 24%. While in 2007 the Latin America component gained 47%, almost nine times as much as the MSCI-G7 index for developed markets, since mid-September 2008 stocks in Latin America have been doing worse than stocks in developed countries, as concerns about access to credit and the adverse impact of sharp falls in commodity prices and in local currencies contribute to increased risk aversion and to outflows of capital. Many governments in the region have used revenue from the commodity boom to pay down debt and build reserves. Now, facing a global financial crisis and the threat of recession in developed countries, the biggest question for Latin America is how long and deep this cyclical downturn will be, and how much it is going to reduce commodity prices. Prices for commodities such as soy, gold, copper and oil, which helped fund the region's boom, have fallen 28% since their July 2 high, according to the RJ/CRB Commodity Price Index. According to Morgan Stanley (in a September 29 report), should prices return to their 10-year average, Latin America's balanced budgets would quickly revert to a deficit of 4.1% of GDP. As risk aversion increases, investors are rapidly pulling out massive amounts of money, creating problems for local markets and banks. There is an ongoing shortage of dollars (as investors liquidate assets in Latin American markets), and as currencies depreciate, inflation concerns increase despite the global slowdown. In Brazil and Mexico, central banks deployed billions of dollars of reserves to stem steep currency declines, as companies in these countries, believing their local currencies would continue to strengthen against the U.S. dollar, took debts in dollars. Some companies also made bets using currency derivatives that have led to losses in the billions of dollars. Dramatic currency swings have caused heavy losses for many companies, from Mexico's cement giant Cemex SAB to the Brazilian conglomerate Grupo Votorantim. Mexico's third-largest retailer, Controladora Comercial Mexicana, declared bankruptcy recently after reporting huge losses related to exchange rate bets. As concerns about corporate exposure to dollar-denominated derivatives increases, yields on bonds issued by many of Brazil's and Mexico's leading companies have started to rise, sharply raising the cost of issuing new debt. Latin American external debt issuance came to a halt in the third quarter of 2008, totaling only US$ 690 million. The cost of obtaining loans for capital expenditures, M&A and debt refinancing is also rising substantially for Latin American corporates amid contagion from the U.S. financial crisis. According to bankers, a protracted trend of shortening tenors and widening spreads has intensified in the past few weeks, indicating that bank lending is quickly following the way of bonds and equity. Finally, money transfers from Latin American migrants are expected to decline for the first time this decade, as a result of economic downturns in the U.S. and Spain, inflation and a weaker dollar. The Mexican Central Bank announced that money transfers from Mexicans living in the U.S. dropped a record 12.2% in August. In 2008, migrants from the region will send some 1.7% less in remittances year-on-year when adjusted for inflation, according to the IADB, compounding the adverse effects of the deepening financial turmoil.

Mexico: Combining monthly inflation predictions from surveys

We examine the problem of combining Mexican inflation predictions or projections provided by a biweekly survey of professional forecasters. Consumer price inflation in Mexico is measured twice a month. We consider several combining methods and advocate the use of dimension reduction techniques whose performance is compared with different benchmark methods, including the simplest average prediction. Missing values in the database are imputed by two different databased methods. The results obtained are basically robust to the choice of the imputation method. A preliminary analysis of the data was based on its panel data structure and showed the potential usefulness of using dimension reduction techniques to combine the experts' predictions. The main findings are: the first monthly predictions are best combined by way of the first principal component of the predictions available; the best second monthly prediction is obtained by calculating the median prediction and is more accurate than the first one.

Global integration, disarticulation and competitiveness in Mexico’s electromechanical sector: A structural analysis

This article analyses the dual functioning of the Mexican electromechanical sector between 1994 and 2008, as distinct from other globalized activities. An estimation of labour productivity in 52 industrial classes finds that structural heterogeneity increased particularly in the 1994-2001 subperiod, alongside technical and organizational improvements that were increasingly concentrated in a small number of subsidiary companies of transnational automotive-assembly enterprises. The application of a shift-share technique also revealed the absence of any significant structural change. Lastly, an extension of the methodology to evaluate competitiveness —developed by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (eclac)— and its application to a second database that reclassifies 1,345 foreign trade products, makes it possible to contrast these changes with the dynamism of the global production networks in which the leading firms of the sector in Mexico are engaged.

CEPAL Review no.65

Income distribution, poverty and social expenditure in Latin America / José Antonio Ocampo. -- Military expenditure and development in Latin America / Eugenio Lahera and Marcelo Ortúzar. -- Growth, distributive justice and social policy / Andrés Solimano. -- Equity, foreign investment and international competitiveness / Adolfo Figueroa. -- Tensions in Latin American structural adjustment: allocation versus distribution / Daniel M. Schydlowsky. -- Competitiveness and labour regulations / Luis Beccaria and Pedro Galin. -- Latin American families: convergences and divergences in models and policies / Irma Arriagada. -- Free trade agreements and female labour: the Chilean situation / Alicia Frohmann and Pilar Romaguera. -- Macroeconomic trends in Paraguay from 1989 to 1997: consumption bubble and financial crisis / Stephane Straub. -- The strategies pursued by Mexican firms in their efforts to become global players / Alejandra Salas-Porras. -- Regulating the private provision of drinking water and sanitation services / Terence R, Lee and Andrei S. Jouravlev. -- Quality management promotion to improve competitiveness / Hessel Schuurman.

CEPAL Review no.60

Development thinking and policies: the way ahead / Gert Rosenthal. -- Macroeconomic policies for growth / Ricardo Ffrench-Davis. -- Capital flows: lessons from the Chilean experience / Eduardo Aninat, Christian Lorrain. -- Changes In the industrial development of Latin America / José Miguel Benavente, Gustavo Crespi, Jorge Katz, Giovanni Stumpo. -- Pension system reforms in Latin America: the position of the International organizations / Carmelo Mesa-Lago. -- The contributions of applied anthropology to peasant development / John Durston. -- Biodiversity prospecting: a new panacea for development? / Julie M. Feinsilver. -- Foreign Investment and competitive development In Latin America and the Caribbean / Alejandro C. Vera-Vassallo. -- The Mexican peso crisis / Stephany Grijfìth-Jones.

CEPAL Review no. 115

Stylized features of the investment-growth connection in Latin America, 1980-2012 / Sandra Manuelito and Luis Felipe Jiménez.--International technological dynamics in production sectors: An empirical analysis / Fernando Isabella Revetria.-- Does public financial support stimulate innovation and productivity? An impact evaluation / Diego Aboal and Paula Garda.-- Digital inclusion in education in Tarija, Plurinational State of Bolivia / Sulma Farfán Sossa, Antonio Medina Rivilla and María Luz Cacheiro González.-- Macroeconomic trade-offs and external vulnerabilities of human development in Nicaragua / Marco V. Sánchez Cantillo.-- Classroom discipline, classroom environment and student performance in Chile / Carolina Gazmuri, Jorge Manzi and Ricardo D. Paredes.-- Pricing and spread components at the Lima Stock Exchange / Luis Chávez-Bedoya, Carlos Loaiza Álamo and Giannio Téllez De Vettori.-- Exports from the Brazilian automotive sector to the Southern Common Market: Trade diversion or cost reduction? / André Filipe Zago de Azevedo and Angélica Massuquetti.--Determinants of unfair inequality in Brazil, 1995 and 2009 / Ana Claudia Annegues, Erik Alencar de Figueiredo and Wallace Patrick Santos de Farias Souza.-- A comparative analysis of productivity in Brazilian and Mexican manufacturing industries / Armênio de Souza Rangel and Fernando Garcia de Freitas.

Mexico: industrial policies and the production of information and communication technology goods and services

This study investigates the extent to which the digital boom has had repercussions on productive activity, in terms of both manufacturing (ict goods) and services (ict services), in addition to its potential ramifications in the rest of the Mexican economy. Input-output matrices are used and compared to those of Brazil and the United States. Mexico has fallen behind, particularly in the production of ict goods, and the productive chains of this activity have weakened. The ict services sector offers much greater potential than has been exploited thus far, with the advantage that it involves comparatively more value added and has major diversification possibilities. It is considered essential to find more effective industrial policies targeted on the ict goods and services sectors; but the experience of countries such as Brazil, which have applied more proactive approaches with mixed results, suggests that this will be challenging.

Proposed action lines of the Committee on South-South Cooperation for the period 2016-2018. Note by the Secretariat

The secretariat is hereby circulating the present document, prepared by the Mexican Agency for International Development Cooperation (AMEXCID), to members of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), as input to the meeting of the Committee on South-South Cooperation to be held in the framework of the thirty-sixth session of the Commission.