– The role of oil theft and narcocracy and the electoral consequences of organized crime
Roxana Gutiérrez-Romero, Nayely Iturbe - UNU-WIDER, 2023 - Helsinki, Finland
When does organized crime resort to assassinating politicians? In narcocracies, criminal groups co-opt political elites through bribery in exchange for protection to traffic illegal drugs. When criminal groups compete, they may also resort to political violence to influence which candidate wins...
Emilio Gutiérrez, Jaakko Meriläinen, Antonio M. Ponce de León - UNU-WIDER, 2022 - Helsinki, Finland
Government responsiveness is an integral feature of representative democracy. Its importance could be amplified in times of crisis, especially if citizens cannot rely on market actors for help. Governments can soften the impacts of negative shocks to the status quo, or exponentiate them by their...
This paper analyses the land tenure reform that took place in Mexico in 1992 and its PROCEDE programme (Ejido Rights Certification Programme). It considers the counter-agrarian reform’s objectives, the context in which it was proposed, and the different actors involved. It delves into...
Ana L. De La O - UNU-WIDER, 2021 - Helsinki, Finland
Does clientelism perpetuate the weak state capacity that characterizes many young democracies? Prior work explains that clientelist parties skew public spending to private goods and under-supply public goods.
Building on these insights, this article argues that clientelism creates a...
Dragan Filipovich, Miguel Niño-Zarazúa, Alma Santillán Hernández - UNU-WIDER, 2021 - Helsinki, Finland
Voter coercion is a recurrent threat to pro-poor redistribution in young democracies. In this study we focus on Mexico’s paradigmatic Progresa-Oportunidades-Prospera (POP) programme. We investigate whether local mayors exploited POP to coerce voters, and if so, what effect these actions had...
Susan Stokes - UNU-WIDER, 2021 - Helsinki, Finland
There are sound theoretical reasons to expect clientelism to suppress economic growth: politicians who garner support by offering employment to voters and grassroots party members can do so more effectively when the voters’ participation constraint is met with low wages. Hence, clientelism...
Sonia Bhalotra, Manuel Fernández - UNU-WIDER, 2021 - Helsinki, Finland
At the global level, gender gaps in labour force participation have narrowed and over half a billion women have joined the workforce in the last 30 years. However, there is enormous variation in women's labour force participation (FLFP) across low- and middle-income countries, and there is no...
Inés Berniell, Lucila Berniell, Dolores de la Mata, María Edo, Mariana Marchionni - UNU-WIDER, 2021 - Helsinki, Finland
We study the causal effect of motherhood on labour market outcomes in Latin America by adopting an event study approach around the birth of the first child based on panel data from national household surveys for Chile, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay.
Our main contributions are: (i) providing new...
– Evidence from Mexican informal and formal workers
Emily Conover, Melanie Khamis, Sarah Pearlman - UNU-WIDER, 2021 - Helsinki, Finland
In this paper we analyse informal work in Mexico, which accounts for the majority of employment in the country and has grown over time. We document that the informal sector is composed of two distinct parts: salaried informal employment and self-employment. Relative to self-employment and formal...
Sonia Bhalotra, Manuel Fernández - UNU-WIDER, 2021 - Helsinki, Finland
We estimate the relative importance of alternative labour supply and demand mechanisms in explaining the rise of female labour force participation over the last 55 years in Mexico. The growth of female labour force participation in Mexico between 1960 and 2015 followed an S-shape, with a...
– Uncovering the nature of informal employment in urban Mexico
Robert Duval Hernández - UNU-WIDER, 2020 - Helsinki, Finland
Using a special module of the 2015 Mexican Labour Force Survey with information on workers’ preferences for jobs with social security coverage, I estimate that 80 per cent of informal workers in large urban areas would prefer to work in a job that provides them with such coverage.
A...
– Evidence from changes in the occupational structure of employment in the USA and Mexico
Guido Matias Cortes, Diego M. Morris - UNU-WIDER, 2020 - Helsinki, Finland
The decline of employment in middle-wage, routine task intensive jobs has been well documented for the USA. Increased offshoring towards lower-income countries such as Mexico has been proposed as a potential driver of this decline.
Our analysis provides a unique and new approach to address the...
– The Case of Mexico’s Progresa-Oportunidades-Prospera Programme
Serena Masino, Miguel Niño-Zarazúa - Journal of Development Studies, 2020
This paper follows a quasi-experimental research design to assess the impact of the electronic payment system of Mexico’s Progresa-Oportunidades-Prospera (POP) programme. The switch from cash payments to electronic payments delivered via savings accounts is found to have medium-term effects...