Migración y desarrollo

Kurt Unger, de nuestra División de Economía, acaba de publicar un paper en
NBER con importantes resultados.

El bottomline: los municipios con mayor migración están "creciendo" más
rápido que los de menos migración (gracias a las famosas remesas); y como
los de baja migración son más ricos, el resultado es convergencia entre
ambos grupos. Son buenas noticias: a pesar de sus políticos, el país avanza
con el sudor de su gente.

Regional Economic Development and Mexican Out-Migration
by Kurt Unger - #11432 (ITI LS)
http://papers.nber.org/papers/W11432

Abstract:
This paper shows evidence of positive effects in the economic
development of sending communities in Mexico due to migration. The principal
hypothesis of this study is that remittances, knowledge and experience
acquired by migrants during their migratory cycle, can be translated into
larger economic growth in the out migration municipalities. This result
presupposes that Government could create complementary incentives to take
advantage of profitable activities. Economic and migration data for each
municipality is used which allows to associate characteristics of
communities, migratory flows and the effects in profitable activities.

There are three sections. A first section describes the sending
municipalities according to migratory intensity and their urban /rural
nature. The second section analyzes the relation between remittances and
socioeconomic conditions of the communities. In a third section the effect
over time is estimated, relating per capita income growth and migratory
flows intensity.

The most relevant results are the existence of income convergence over time
between
high and low migration municipalities in the North and South of Mexico. As
well, we find a positive and significant relation between per capita income
growth and the percentage of households that receive remittances across
communities, both at the country level and
for the northern and southern regions separately.

http://papers.nber.org/papers/W11432

Demand for music--legal or illegal

Good economics is about figuring out not well-understood markets... like the
market for music:

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2005/06/should_music_co
.html

...it is difficult to judge how a given level of illegal downloads will
affect economic efficiency. First, the quantity of music sold in a given
year is not a very accurate indicator of how much value consumers receive
from music. Fans commonly experiment by buying a number of CDs, only a few
of which pay off and become favorites. Many or most of the products bought
are quickly regarded as disappointments and discarded.
(...)
Evaluating the efficiency consequences of illegal downloads is difficult for
a more fundamental reason. Most generally, we do not understand the demand
for music very well. We do not understand what most fans want from their
music. Just as book buyers are not always readers, the music market is not
always about the tunes. Sometimes it is about symbolic values.

It is a mystery why fans spend almost all of their music money on product of
very recent vintage. Until we untangle this puzzle, and we have not yet, we
will not understand how Internet music is likely to affect consumer welfare.
(...)
Most likely the music market is about more than simply buying "good music,"
as a critic might understand that term. People buy music to signal their
hipness, to participate in current trends, or to distinguish themselves from
previous generations. Buyers use music to signal their social standing,
whether this consists of going to the opera or listening to heavy metal.
Others value partaking in novelty per se. They find newness exciting, a way
of following the course of fashion, and the music market offers one handy
arena for this pursuit. For some people music is an excuse to go out and
mix with others, a coordination point for dancing, staying up late,
drinking, or a singles scene. Along these lines, many fans seem to enjoy
musical promotions, hype, and advertising as ends in themselves, and not
merely as means to hearing music. They like being part of the "next big
thing." The accompanying music cannot be so bad to their ears as to offend
them, but the deftness of the harmonic triads is not their primary concern.

In other words, the features of the market that matter to the critic may not
be very special to consumers at all. Most of all, consumers seem to care
about some feature of newness and trendiness, more than they care about
music per se. So how much does it matter, from a consumer's point of view,
if weaker copyright protection reshapes the world of music?

Proselitismo oficial y competencia desleal

El IFE y un amplio número de analistas se han pronunciado en contra del anuncio foxista de que dedicará tiempo y esfuerzo en apoyar la campaña del candidato panista a la presidencia. El llamado va a otros líderes políticos, por si acaso. Hasta donde entiendo, el argumento es que si un oficial electo hace proselitismo en favor de los candidatos de su partido estaría abusando de recursos públicos, como su imagen y sus choferes, para hacer "competencia desleal" que, además de ilegítima, haría menos equilibrada y competitiva la elección presidencial, estatal o distrital. Mis reacciones:

1. ¿Qué es o cómo se come la competencia desleal o ilegítima? Si no es delito que Fox apoye a Creel, o Montiel a Peña, o AMLO a Polevnsky o a Ebrard, ¿por qué estamos tan mortificados? ¿Acaso no es este mismo activismo de Madrazo, Fox y AMLO, lo que desde ahora nos garantiza una elección competitiva como nunca?

2. Existe el argumento de que la democracia mexicana es una niña inocente, que proviene de un autoritarismo donde un partido oficial se las ganaba de todas todas por medios ilegítimos, por lo que sería un retroceso que un (ahora legítimo) gobernante se ponga a hacer proselitismo. Pero, ¿qué tal que un gobernante quiere usar su legitimidad o popularidad para comprarle unos votos a su candidato favorito? ¿Por qué no dejamos que el electorado decida donde ponerle raya a los candidatos y sus campañas? Si ya tenemos tres partidos fuertes, ¿por qué le seguimos teniendo miedo al lobo?

3. Entiendo que el IFE y otros actores "tienen que decir" todo esto, a costa de perder legitimidad como árbitros u observadores neutrales. Pero ya en serio, ¿de verdad alguien cree que algún gobernador de cualquier partido se atará las manos en el 2006? Me queda claro, eso sí, que el IFE tiene que afilar lo más que pueda sus pocos dientes y su maquinaria fiscalizadora.

4. Las democracias modernas tienen una característica llamada "incumbency advantage", cuyo origen y fuerza, aunque incómoda para algunos politólogos, es bastante normal. Aún antes de que comience alguna precampaña o campaña, los suspirantes tienen condiciones iniciales diferentes: resulta casi imposible que un jefe de gobierno del D.F. o un gobernador electo tenga igual o menos reconocimiento entre el electorado que un misterioso diputado o un prohombre del norte o sur. ¿Pero qué le hacemos? ¿Le cobramos impuestos a los candidatos populares para subsidiar a los desconocidos?

5. La competencia electoral "on a level playing field" es un mito que confunde a muchos. La única forma de conseguir que todos los candidatos tuvieran la misma probabilidad de ganar sería hacer un sorteo entre todo el padrón elegible. Según entiendo, la normalidad democrática consiste en un conjunto de reglas claras y parejas para todos los contendientes, no de oportunidades o resultados igualmente probables. Si con mucho más adversidades ya sacamos al PRI de Los Pinos, ¿por qué tanto miedo a que llegue al poder un candidato ilegítimo X y que nunca lo podamos volver a sacar?

Too many choices?

http://www.reason.com/0506/cr.vp.consumer.shtml

Consumer Vertigo
Virginia Postrel

(...)During the last couple of decades, the American economy has undergone a
variety revolution. Instead of simply offering mass-market goods, businesses of
all sorts increasingly compete to give consumers more personalized products,
more varied experiences, and more choice.

(...) Young, well-educated adults in particular have unprecedented freedom to
make whatever they want of their lives: to decide where to live, what to do,
whom to befriend, whom (or whether) to marry.

“Since graduation, we’ve struggled to make our own happiness,” Jenny Norenberg,
a young lawyer, writes in Newsweek. “It seems that having so many choices has
sometimes overwhelmed us. In the seven years since I left home for college,
I’ve had 13 addresses and lived in six cities. How can I stay with one person,
at one job, in one city, when I have the world at my fingertips?”

It’s all too much, declares the latest line of social criticism. Americans are
facing a crisis of choice. We’re increasingly unhappy, riddled with anxiety and
regret, because we have so much freedom to decide what to do with our money and
our lives. Some choice may be good, but we’ve gone over the limit. The result
is _The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies_, the title of Yale political
scientist Robert Lane’s 2000 book on the subject.

To these critics, providing too many choices is the latest way liberal societies
in general, and markets in particular, make people miserable. “Choices
proliferate beyond our pleasure in choosing and our capacity to handle the
choices,” writes Lane. Like cheap food and sedentary labor, the argument goes,
abundant choice is not something human beings are biologically evolved to cope
with. We’d be better off with fewer decisions to make.

“As the number of choices keeps growing, negative aspects of having a multitude
of options begin to appear,” writes Swarthmore psychologist Barry Schwartz in
The Paradox of Choice, published in January 2004. “As the number of choices
grows further, the negatives escalate until we become overloaded. At this
point, choice no longer liberates, but debilitates. It might even be said to
tyrannize.”

(...)At the heart of the anti-choice argument is a false dichotomy: We can have
a narrow range of standardized choices, or we can live with options that are
infinite, dizzying, and always open.

“Social ties actually decrease freedom, choice, and autonomy,” he writes.
“Marriage, for example, is a commitment to a particular other person that
curtails freedom of choice in sexual and even emotional partners.” (...)
There’s something deeply wrong with this understanding of choice. Freedom to
choose must include the freedom to commit.

Ultimately, the debate about choice is not about markets but about character.
Liberty and responsibility really do go together; it’s not just a platitude.
The more freedom we have to control our lives, the more responsibility we have
for how they turn out. In a world of constraints, learning to be happy with
what you’re given is a virtue. In a world of choices, virtue comes from
learning to make commitments without regrets. And commitment, in turn, requires
self-confidence and self-knowledge.

“We are free to be the authors of our lives,” says Schwartz, “but we don’t know
exactly what kind of lives we want to ‘write.’” Maturity lies in deciding just
that.

EDOMEX y rendimientos marginales de campaña

Las gráficas de este documento indican:

1. El 30 de enero Peña y Mendoza estaban "empatados" en las encuestas, y muy poca gente tenía una opinión favorable tanto de Mendoza como Peña (13% aprox)--síntoma de que casi nadie los conocía.

Y se pusieron a gastar... y ahora todo mundo los conoce... por lo que hoy...

2. El rendimiento marginal decreciente de la "imagen favorable" de Enrique peña ya ocurrió (tiene 43% de percepciones favorables)--pero suficiente para contar con 52% de la intención de voto.

3. El rendimiento marginal CRECIENTE de la "imagen desfavorable" de Ruben Mendoza--lo llevó a que ahora el 32% de la gente tiene una opinión desfavorable.

4. Según los encuestados, los principales atributos de los candidatos son:

Peña - propositivo, creíble, honesto
Mendoza - conflictivo y mentiroso
Polevnsky - inexperta

Candidatos bastante persuasivos, como se puede ver.

País sin reformas: ¿India o México?

Ejercicio mental: Sustituye México donde diga India, y PRI donde diga Indian Congress Party... luego busque las diferencias--hay al menos dos.

 

India is Far from Free Markets

http://indiauncut.blogspot.com/2005/06/myth-of-indias-liberalization.html

 

(...)New Delhi’s decision to start liberalizing its economy in 1991 is touted as a seminal event in India’s history, the moment when it threw off the shackles of Fabian socialism and embraced free markets. It is the stuff of myth--and to a large extent, it is exactly that.

While part of India has benefited from being opened up to foreign products and influences, most of the country is still denied access to free markets and all the advantages they bring. India opened its markets in 1991 not because there was a political will to open the economy, but because of a balance-of-payments crisis that left it with few options. The liberalization was half-hearted and limited to a few sectors, and nowhere near as broad as it needed to be.

One would have expected India’s growth to be driven by labor-intensive manufacturing but, almost by default, it instead came in the poorly licensed area of services exports. The manufacturing sector, ideally placed in terms of labor and raw material to compete with China, never took off. India’s restrictive labor laws, a remnant of the socialist infrastructure that India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, put in place in the 1950s and 1960s, were politically impossible to reform. It remains excruciatingly difficult for most Indians to start a business or set up shop in India’s cities.

This is painstakingly illustrated in “Law, Liberty and Livelihood”, a new book edited by Parth Shah and Naveen Mandava (...) write: “Entrepreneurs can expect to go through 11 steps to launch a business over 89 days on average, at a cost equal to 49.5% of gross national income per capita.” Contrast the figure of 89 days with two days for Australia, eight for Singapore and 24 for neighboring Pakistan.

But often, even this figure is just a notional one, and entrepreneurs find it next to impossible to get a legal permit to start a business at all. Street hawkers and shop owners in the cities often cannot get a license at all. (Even those who do have to comply with draconian regulations that offer so much discretion to the authorities that corruption is inevitable.) They survive by paying regular bribes to municipal authorities and policemen, which are generally fixed in such a way by this informal market that they can barely survive on what they earn, and cannot expand their business or build their savings. They are trapped in a cycle of enforced illegality and systematic extortion by authorities, which results in a tragic wastage of capital. It serves as a disincentive to entrepreneurship, as well as to urbanization, the driving force of growing economies.

Another disincentive to urbanization is how hard it is for poor people to get legal accommodation in the big cities. In Bombay, for example, an urban land ceiling act and a rent-control act make it virtually impossible for poor migrants to rent or buy homes, and they are forced into extralegal housing. The vast shantytowns of Bombay--one of them, Dharavi, is the biggest slum in Asia--hold, by some estimates, more than $2 billion of dead capital. For most of the migrants who live in these slums, India hasn’t changed since 1991. As that phrase from India’s pop culture goes, “same difference.”

India’s policymakers are aware of these anomalies, but it is an acute irony in India that any proposal to reform the bureaucracy has to first wind its way through the bureaucracy. (...)

It is in the nature of bureaucracies, Mr. Shourie points out, to endlessly iterate. He charts how the apparently simple task of framing a model tender document took the government more than 13 years, as drafts of it circulated between different committees and ministries. Anything even slightly more complicated, and with pockets of political opposition to it, like economic reforms, becomes almost impossible to implement. Dismantling state controls is only possible if there is political will and a popular consensus. None of these exist. On the contrary, there is a popular belief that the economic inequalities in India are caused or exacerbated by free markets.

The socialist left, a natural proponent of such views, believes that free markets are the problem and not the solution. India’s communist parties have blocked labor reform, opposed foreign investment and prevented privatization of public-sector units. They naturally have a vested interest in the “license-permit-quota raj,” as the web of statist controls is called. On all these issues they are supported, surprise surprise, by the religious right.

The Hindu right wing (...) also fears globalization. Its sustenance comes from identity politics, the impact of which is diluted by the opening up of the cultural mindspace to “foreign influences.” If people are busy chasing prosperity and gaining Western liberal values, they will naturally have less time to focus on “the Hindu identity,” and suchlike. (...)

In between the socialist left and the religious right is the (Indian National) Congress, a party which occupies the center of the political space almost by default. Its position on issues is always malleable, and although it is currently the party of government, it leads a coalition that depends on the left for survival. The pace of reforms has not increased since it came to power last year, and is not likely to do so anytime soon. While the world focuses on the metaphorical bright lights of Bangalore, most of the country--indeed, much of Bangalore itself, which has been plagued by power and infrastructure problems recently--remains in darkness.

Case study: New York

A menudo se critica a los economistas por no hacer estudios de caso. He
aquí un contraejemplo que puede interesarle a quién este haciendo economía
urbana... o una tesina de historia económica.

"Urban Colossus: Why is New York America's Largest City?"

BY: EDWARD L. GLAESER
Harvard University
http://papers.ssrn.com/paper.taf?abstract_id=732423
Date: June 2005

ABSTRACT:
New York has been remarkably successful relative to any other large city
outside of the sunbelt and it remains the nation's premier metropolis. What
accounts for New York's rise and continuing success? The rise of New York in
the early nineteenth century is the result of technological changes that
moved ocean shipping from a point-to-point system to a hub and spoke system;
New York's geography made it the natural hub of this system. Manufacturing
then centered in New York because the hub of a transport system is, in many
cases, the ideal place to transform raw materials into finished goods. This
initial dominance was entrenched by New York's role as the hub for
immigration. In the late 20th century, New York's survival is based almost
entirely on finance and business services, which are also legacies of the
port. In this period, New York's role as a hub still matters, but it is far
less important than the edge that density and agglomeration give to the
acquisition of knowledge.

Babyfaced Politicians Lose Elections

http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/002824.html#002824

The more competent looking candidates also looked less babyfaced.

In the second paper, Leslie Zebrowitz, of Brandeis University in Massachusetts, said that the results appeared to reflect the relative “baby-facedness” of the candidates.

Previous research has shown that people of any age who appear baby-faced, with a round face, large eyes, a small nose, a high forehead and a small chin, tend to be rated as less competent — though often as more trustworthy as well. “Although the study doesn’t tell us exactly what competence is — there are many kinds, including physical strength, social dominance and intellectual shrewdness.

Baby-faced people are perceived to be lacking in all these qualities,” Dr Zebrowitz said.

(...) The babyfaced men might actually be the better choices in spite of the electorate's aversion to babyfaces in leaders.

In fact, studies by Zebrowitz and others have shown that babyfaced men are actually more intelligent, better educated, more assertive and apt to win more military medals than their mature-looking counterparts.

Research in the area of facial impressions has implications for political marketing, social decision-making and even the democratic process, Zebrowitz believes. "The data we have suggest that we're not necessarily electing better leaders – people who are actually more competent, though we are electing people who look the part."

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Faces Predict Election Outcomes

Evidencia empírica de que la brillante sonrisa de Enrique Peña es un buen
indicador de su nivel de competencia:

Inferences of Competence from Faces Predict Election Outcomes
Alexander Todorov, Anesu N. Mandisodza, Amir Goren Crystal C. Hall
SCIENCE VOL 308 10 JUNE 2005

We show that inferences of competence based solely on facial appearance
predicted the outcomes of U.S. congressional elections better than chance
(e.g., 68.8% of the Senate races in 2004) and also were linearly related to
the margin of victory. These inferences were specific to competence and
occurred within a 1-second exposure to the faces of the candidates. The
findings suggest that rapid, unreflective trait inferences can contribute to
voting choices, which are widely assumed to be based primarily on rational
and deliberative considerations.

Economistas, revolucionarios y poetas

Dato curioso:

 

¿Qué tienen en común Adam Smith, J. M Keynes, Pancho Villa y Federico García Lorca?

 

...Todos nacieron el 5 de junio...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_5#Births

 

 

Governance Indicators for Mexico 1996 - 2004

• Everything that got better from 1996 to 2002, got worse in 2004.
• Everything that got worse from 1996 to 2000, did not get any better or has come down even more.
• We are above regional averages on every dimension--but that is easy.
• We are below income category averages on all dimensions but one--regulatory quality.
• But how can regulatory quality be so high when rule of law is so low?
  

Governance indicators for Mexico, 1996 - 2004
Indicator	1996 Percentile Rank (0-100)	2002 Percentile Rank (0-100)	2004 Percentile Rank (0-100)	2004 Regional Average	2004 Income Category Average
Voice and Accountability	42.9	59.6	56.8	53.6	64.6
Political Stability	34.8	50.8	43.7	39.2	67.6
Government Effectiveness	52.0	61.9	56.7	42.1	62.2
Regulatory Quality	74.0	68	68.0	49.8	63.0
Rule of Law	55.4	52.1	45.9	39.1	64.4
Control of Corruption	39.3	52.1	48.8	44.6	63.4
Source: Kaufmann D., A. Kraay, and M. Mastruzzi 2005: Governance Matters IV
http://www.worldbank.org/wbi/governance/pubs/govmatters4.html
Note: Rankings based on a survey of 199 countries.