Narrow Results

Emerging markets face a challenging recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Although most nations strive to improve their competitiveness to escape from the economic downturn caused by the pandemic, the results may be different from the expectations of these governments. In this chapter, we analyze competitiveness in Mexico and Brazil. We attempt to go beyond the interpretation of results collected in well-known reports, such as the Global Economic Index, to demonstrate the need for further analysis in those countries where political factors may carry a non-comparable weight. We use the DD-Based 9-Factor Model, which considers the impact of politics in public policymaking. We compare Mexico and Brazil, as both nations are undergoing substantial political change, with personal leadership and geopolitical impact unmatched in the region. International managers should be aware of the impact of strong leadership upon public policy and national competitiveness. Those findings are no novelty in Latin America, a region where the political dimension may turn the table on investors without warning. Indeed, political factors should not be adequately addressed by competitiveness benchmarks in those nations where the rule of man may replace the rule of law.

Drawing upon the historical use of Las Castas — paintings of racialized identity categories during the Spanish colonial era — we use this chapter to explore stories of discrimination and how it persists in Mexico. Borrowing from non-corporeal actant theory, we set out to explore differences and inequality formations of multiple identities. Inequity is symbolized through the names given to biracial and multiracial castes and overtly presented through the arrangement and numbering of categories in the paintings. We overlay contemporary understandings of oppression and opportunity found in the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP). New antenarratives of hierarchies appear along with the persistence of the old. In particular, the hierarchical positions of those whose ancestors are Spanish and Indigenous have improved over time, while those who identify as Indigenous remain disadvantaged. The stories that we surface suggest that racial differences co-existed in colonial-Mexico and remnants of the caste system may still haunt social life of citizens today. The research attempts to build on scholarship that identified ideas of discrimination as persistent actors in evolving networks. It also contributes to our understanding of how oppressive systems and discrimination are transmedial, persisting as stories embedded in, and reinforced by, complex understandings of interaction. One can plausibly conclude that oral narratives are transmediated both in the art of classic paintings and in response to questions of the LAPOP.

Shoreline identification using satellite images is compared with in situ shoreline measurements in the Yucatan Peninsula to evaluate its potential for studying shoreline changes in places with a paucity of data. This study firstly tests the detection limits of shoreline identification by comparing a SPOT image with ground shoreline measurements, and secondly we show examples of overlaying satellite-derived shorelines from three different years to assess the ability of the technique to quantify real shoreline changes. The mean (-0.19 m) and the standard deviation (4 m) between the ground and satellite-derived shoreline are much smaller than the pixel size. Shoreline changes of more than 30 m were measured between images spanning several years (2004, 2006 and 2008) in areas near to coastal structures and near urban areas without coastal vegetation.

This study analyzes the differences in financial performance between sustainable firms and nonsustainable firms through the use of a fuzzy Jensen’s alpha to measure abnormal returns. The sample consisted of 28 of the 35 firms from various sectors that composed the Mexican Price and Quotation Index (IPC) from 2008 to 2011. We compared two different methodologies to measure the Jensen’s alpha values, namely, ordinary least squares and Fuzzy Regression. Our results demonstrate that sustainable firms have greater possibilities of obtaining abnormal returns and evince less uncertainty than non-sustainable firms. Finally, we mention the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) trends in the Mexican capital market to emphasize the importance of the disclosure of non-financial issues as part of the process of generating long-term sustainability profits.

This paper exploits the surge in Chinese exports from 1994 to 2004 to evaluate the effects of a competition shock from a low wage competitor for producers in an important middle-income country, Mexico. We find that this shock causes selection and reallocation at both firm and product levels and that its impact is highly heterogeneous at the intens ive and extensive margins. Sales of smaller plants and more marginal products are compressed and are more likely to cease, whereas those of larger plants and core products seem relatively impervious to the shock. This implies a reallocation in terms of market shares within firms and between firms. We also show that the impact of expanded access to cheaper Chinese intermediate inputs has a similar effect, with larger plants benefiting more from the availability of cheaper imported inputs.