The effects of currency fluctuations and trade integration on industry trade between Canada and Mexico

Since studies of North American trade flows tend to focus on the United States as the main trading partner, trade between Canada and Mexico has received relatively little attention. Here, we examine bilateral trade flows for 62 Canadian export industries to Mexico and 45 import industries from Mexico to assess the effects of currency fluctuations and trade integration on these individual trade flows. We find that Mexico’s largest export industries respond to depreciation more than Canada’s largest export industries do. Both countries’ trade flows are influenced even more by trade integration. Since there is evidence of strong intra-industry trade between these two countries, we can attribute this effect to the exploitation of economies of scale.     

德国工业4.0经济潜力预测与组织管理体系

据德国信息产业、电信与新媒体协会(BITKOM)2014年发布的"工业4.0对德国经济潜力研究报告"预测,德国经济将从第四次产业革命中获益。通过实施工业4.0战略,到2025年德国的6个重要行业可实现增加值约780亿欧元。本文对该报告的研究目的、研究方法、主要结论及实施条件进行分析,并对德国目前初步形成的工业4.0平台组织管理体系进行研究。     

Inflation targeting and inflation expectations in Mexico

In this article we analyse inflation expectations in Mexico. After a review of the theoretical and empirical literature, we apply unit root, normality and cointegration tests to the data provided by Banco de México (Banxico) in the Survey on the Expectations of the Private Sector Economics Specialists. Our results reject the null hypothesis of normality for inflation expectations over the period 2004:01–2011:12. The exchange rate has become one of the most relevant variables in the transmission mechanism of monetary policy in a small open economy. In this regard, we show the existence of a long-run relationship between nominal exchange rate and interest rate where inflation expectations matter for long-term dynamics.     

On the real effects of inflation and inflation uncertainty in Mexico

We estimate an augmented multivariate GARCH-M model of inflation and output growth for Mexico at business cycle frequencies. The main findings are: (1) inflation uncertainty has a negative and significant effect on growth; (2) once the effect of inflation uncertainty is accounted for, lagged inflation does not have a direct negative effect on output growth; (3) However as predicted by Friedman and Ball, higher average inflation raises inflation uncertainty, and the overall net effect of average inflation on output growth in Mexico is negative. That is, average inflation is harmful to Mexican growth due to its impact on inflation uncertainty. (4) The Mexican Presidential election cycle significantly raises inflation uncertainty both during the year of the election and the year following the election which has correspondingly negative effects on output growth.     

拉丁美洲1990年代经济改革特点--以墨西哥经济改革为例

拉丁美洲在20世纪90年代前后开始的全面经济改革,新自由主义属性显著。在这一过程中,墨西哥的新自由经济改革颇具代表性。因此,以墨西哥的加工贸易和国有企业私有化为例,分析拉丁美洲经济改革中的特点以及出现的问题。     

Pollution Control and Foreign Direct Investment in Mexico: An Industry-Level Analysis

Foreign direct investment (FDI) flows into developing countries have been increasing dramatically over the past decade. At the same time, there has been widespread concern that lax environmental standards are in part responsible for this surge. This paper revisits the question of the existence of a pollution haven effect by examining the extent to which the pollution intensity of production helps explain FDI in Mexico. We focus on pollution intensities, which are directly related to emission regulations, rather than unobservable pollution taxes and allow for substitution between capital and pollution. Examining several different pollutants, we find a positive correlation between FDI and pollution that is statistically and economically significant in the case of the highly regulated sulfur dioxide emissions. Industries for which the estimated relationship between FDI and pollution is positive receive up to 30% of total FDI and 30% of manufacturing output. Although we confirm the importance of Mexico’s comparative advantage in labor-intensive production processes, consistent with the previous literature, our results suggest that environmental considerations may matter as well for firms’ investment decisions.      

Purchasing Power Parity and aggregation bias for a developing country: The case of Mexico

This paper investigates long-run Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) between the US and Mexico. We use a panel of disaggregated price data between the US and Mexico with a long time series to look at two types of aggregation bias. The first is examined in Imbs et al. — which we refer to as estimator aggregation bias — and the second is put forth by Broda and Weinstein — hereafter, data aggregation bias. The findings indicate substantial estimator aggregation bias and data aggregation bias. Although estimates using aggregate data and imposing homogeneous coefficients provide little evidence of PPP, findings with disaggregated data and heterogeneous coefficient estimators offer strong support. The results also suggest the presence of small-sample bias as examined in Chen and Engel, but with little effect on the qualitative results. Tradable goods and non-tradable goods show little distinction in convergence rates. Estimated half-lives are lower under flexible than fixed exchange rates and indicate rapid convergence during the Mexican peso crisis.     

我国光伏产业发展的风险及应对策略

太阳能光伏系统所具有的规模上的灵活性、地域上的适应性、用电上的便利性等特征,决定了光伏产业的市场潜力巨大、发展前景广阔。但受欧美经济持续下滑、贸易保护主义抬头和企业生产盲目扩张等因素影响,光伏产业发展面临着很多困难和问题。光伏产业在应对气候变化和保证能源安全方面意义重大,需要通过产业、科技、财税、金融、外贸等多方面的政策扶持,促进技术升级改造,优化产品结构,降低产品成本,从而实现光伏产业的持续健康发展,为我国的产业结构调整和实体经济发展发挥积极作用。     

Economic evaluation of duloxetine as a first-line treatment for painful diabetic peripheral neuropathy in Mexico

Abstract

Objective:

To perform an economic evaluation of duloxetine, pregabalin, and both branded and generic gabapentin for managing pain in patients with painful diabetic peripheral neuropathy (PDPN) in Mexico.

Research design and methods:

The analysis was conducted using a 3-month decision model, which compares duloxetine 60?mg once daily (DUL), pregabalin 150?mg twice daily (PGB), and gabapentin 600?mg three-times daily (GBP) for PDPN patients with moderate-to-severe pain. A systematic review was performed and placebo-adjusted risk ratios for achieving good pain relief (GPR), adverse events (AE), and withdrawal owing to intolerable AE were calculated. Direct medical costs included drug acquisition and additional visits due to lack of efficacy (poor pain relief) or intolerable AE. Unit costs were taken from local sources. Adherence rates were used to estimate the expected drug costs. All costs are expressed in 2010 Mexican Pesos (MXN). Utility values drawn from published literature were applied to health states. The proportion of patients with GPR and quality-adjusted life years (QALY) were assessed.

Results:

Branded-GBP was dominated by all the other options. PGB was more costly and less effective than DUL. Compared with branded-GBP and PGB, DUL led to savings of 1.01 and 1.74 million MXN (per 1000 patients). The incremental cost per QALY gained with DUL used instead of generic-GBP was $102 433 MXN. This amount is slightly lower than the estimated gross domestic product per capita in Mexico for 2010. During a second-order Monte Carlo simulation, DUL had the highest probability of being cost-effective (61%), followed by generic-GBP (25%) and PGB (14%).

Limitations:

Study limitations include a short timeframe and using data from different dosage schemes for GBP and PGB.

Conclusions:

This study suggests that DUL provides overall savings and better health outcomes compared with branded-GBP and PGB. Administering DUL rather than generic-GBP is a cost-effective intervention to manage PDPN in Mexico.     

Efficiency of Payments for Environmental Services: Equity and additionality in a case study from a Biosphere Reserve in Chiapas, Mexico

Payments for Environmental Services (PES) have been claimed as a more efficient way of accomplishing conservation and development goals than other indirect strategies, reaching their optimum when the buyer pays the opportunity costs of the foregone benefits. Different inefficient situations have been described, like lack of additionality, where payments are given for practices that would have been adopted anyway. Trade-offs between efficiency and equity of PES have usually emerged as well. In this paper we assess the equity, additionality and stakeholders' perceptions of a PES scheme in a Mexican community inside a Biosphere Reserve. We applied structured interviews to all adults, a total of 66 people from 31 households. Our results show a dual response in equity and additionality, depending on land tenure. PES have an egalitarian effect within landowners and landless groups, but it broadens the gap between them. Additionality is low for landowners and high for the landless people in the community, even though the former are the ones with full decision over the land. Although the scheme does not seem efficient under the classical PES paradigm, it is perceived as a reward, reinforcing conservation attitudes even though most of the interviewees claim it to be insufficient.     

The effect of NAFTA on internal migration in Mexico: a regional economic analysis

Trade facilitates growth in some regions of a country while shrinking others, and therefore to benefit from trade, labour may need to be able to migrate. This mobility is particularly crucial in a developing country with high income inequality like Mexico. We seek to answer the following questions: What characteristics facilitate or hinder that internal migration? Has trade liberalization changed the pattern of internal migration in Mexico? We first predict regional economic growth resulting from changes in Mexico-US tariffs by sector. We find that trade liberalization appears to have largely benefited the manufacturing sector. Next, using a spatial gravity model of migration, we find that while economic growth from trade openness drew workers to urban regions in the northern Border States of Mexico, much of the trade-driven migration occurred before NAFTA. Second, contrary to popular belief, migration from largely rural states appears to have decreased since NAFTA. We also find evidence that migration to the United States increased after NAFTA. Last, we find that income disparity in both the destination and origin region deters migration and that this effect increases after NAFTA. Thus, we see evidence that within-region income disparity can hinder migration, potentially exacerbating income disparity among regions.     

Capital flows,real exchange rate,and growth constraints in Mexico

Besides its well‐known problem of slow economic growth, Mexico’s recent evolution features both a sharp rise in the import‐intensity of economic activity – which may have tightened an external constraint on growth – and a persistent real appreciation of the peso – which may have created a profitability constraint. Adopting the approach of gap models and growth diagnostics, the paper contrasts the relevance of the external and the profitability constraints in Mexico after trade liberalization in the mid‐1980s. Although the trade deficit was pro‐cyclical, the three recent episodes of GDP growth acceleration were not accompanied by pressures in the foreign exchange market. Moreover, error correction models show that investment was highly responsive to the real exchange rate but largely unresponsive to foreign capital flows. The evidence supports the conclusion that investment was deterred by the low profitability of an uncompetitive real exchange rate, rather than by the external constraint.     

动态能力、微观能动主体与组织能力提升

在动荡变化的环境中,企业仅仅拥有"VRIN"属性的资源与能力将难以维持竞争优势,只有不断提升组织能力才是企业基业长青的惟一出路。动态能力在组织能力提升中起重要作用,但动态能力的定义自提出至今仍然模糊不清。本文澄清了动态能力的概念内涵,深入分析了企业高层管理者作为动态能力微观能动主体的角色,并在动态能力及其微观能动主体的基础上构建了一个颇具解释力的组织能力提升框架。     

我国城乡间产业的迁移与分工协调发展

城乡产业分工与协调发展是社会生产力发展到一定阶段的必然趋势,也是消除城乡差别、实现城乡一体化发展的有效途径。在我国进入工业反哺农业、城市支持农村的发展新阶段后,我国城乡产业需要重新进行发展定位,并在城乡间进行产业的迁移和布局调整,以突破城市搞工业、农村搞农业的旧格局,引导城市非农产业和资本进入农村地区,使农民和农村地区能够分享工业化和城市化的巨大收益。这种城乡产业的迁移与调整应顺应产业组织演进和产业分工的新趋势,进行产业链层面的分工与重新布局,在城乡之间建立起一体化的产业体系,并最终形成我国产业体系与产业组织体系、城镇等级体系三者协调发展的局面。为此,在宏观层面需要政府推进制度创新和技术创新,深化体制改革,加快农村地区的基础设施建设,构建起城乡间产业分工发展的制度基础和物质基础;在微观层面则需要企业加快组织转型与创新,形成城乡间新型的产业网络组织。     

Testing assumptions underlying economic research on transgenic food crops for Third World farmers: Evidence from Cuba, Guatemala and Mexico

Transgenic crop varieties (TGVs) are being promoted as essential for improving small-scale Third World (SSTW) agriculture. Most economic research on this topic makes critical, untested assumptions, including that farmers will choose TGVs over other varieties because TGVs are economically optimal and because farmers are risk neutral profit maximizers. We tested these assumptions using data from a survey of 334 farmers in 6 communities in Cuba, Guatemala and Mexico in which farmers ranked 4 real and hypothetical maize varieties for eating and sowing. Our results did not support these assumptions. Most farmers preferred farmer varieties for sowing and especially for eating, avoiding TGVs, a preference associated with being risk averse and with non-monetary preferences. Farmers more integrated into modern agriculture were more likely to choose TGVs. These results suggest that farmers most in need of support and most important for conserving genetic diversity are least favorable toward TGVs, and that alternative ways of improving SSTW agriculture should receive more attention.     

基于生态足迹法的镇江市产业结构调整研究

本研究以环境承载力理论为基础,依据生态足迹的方法计算出镇江市2000-2007年的生态足迹和生态容量,及其产业构成、产业生态赤字/盈余和产业生态效率,结果表明镇江市生态赤字较为严重,产业结构仍旧不尽合理,粗放型经济增长导致的结构性污染和资源短缺是镇江市可持续发展的主要问题。最终我们在实施镇江市产业结构调整时应当做到：从总体上提高资源利用率,加强环境综合治理;稳定第一产业发展比例,控制农业和牧业在一产中的比例,适当发展林业,大力发展渔业;进一步优化工业生产结构;大力发展第三产业。     

中国汽车业节能减排中存在的主要问题及对策研究

节能减排已成为联合国和全世界高度关注的关系到人类生存和发展的焦点问题,而作为交通工具的汽车,是重要的大气污染发生源,因此,汽车节能减排问题已引起越来越多人的关注。本文探讨了我国节能减排对汽车业的重要性,分析了汽车节能减排过程中遇到的主要问题,提出了相应的对策建议。     

Trends and opportunities framing innovation for sustainability in the learning society

Innovation, a broad social and economic activity within emerging societies, transcends any specific technology, even if revolutionary, and is tied to attitudes and behaviours oriented towards the exploitation of change by adding value. In this context, we analyse on-going paths towards innovative societies taking into consideration their sustainable development. The solution-space for innovation for sustainability is characterised by three dimensions: 1) the entire lifespan of a product; 2) the entire socio-technic network of which a particular plant is part of, or from which a particular product emerges; and 3) stakeholders and decision processes, including business organisations and strategies; and public institutions, policy and regulatory frameworks. All theses three dimensions are shown to be critically related with the social appropriation of a broad knowledge base, which calls our special attention to the systems of innovation and competence building shaping our societies.Societies and their organisations differ in their approach to sustainability. Distinguishing between different types of stakeholders helps to elucidate barriers to change, and to exploit the solution-space for innovation. The contributions in this Special Issue illustrate various dimensions of the innovation-space and their related knowledge base. The examples addressed support the conclusion that the framework presented has general applicability to analyse and foster innovation for sustainability.     

全球价值链下产业升级的微观机理分析——以台湾地区PC产业为例

本文以社会网络理论为视角,以我国台湾地区PC产业为例,剖析全球价值链下产业升级的微观机理。研究表明产业升级必须在一个开放的全球生产体系内,通过国际和本土的多重链接来进行知识的传导,由网络的合作关系来获取和积累知识,以完成升级所必须的技术积累。由此总结出发展中国家或地区产业升级的有效路径。     

企业边界变迁的产业组织演化

交易成本理论从成本角度分析企业边界形成与变迁,企业能力理论则采用比较利益的方法从收入角度分析.短期中,如果企业能力有很大的差异,交易成本降低,位于价值链中上下游的企业将趋于专业化生产;如果企业能力均匀分布,交易成本降低,对专业化生产没有影响.长期中,企业能力、交易成本、企业边界形成互动循环的演化机制,并且在竞争过程中实现自然选择,引起产业组织演化.