Gender and Academia in Mexico
This paper analyses whether the gender composition of decision-making boards affects promotion decisions for either male or female researchers, by exploiting a unique database for a context in which a group of peers makes all promotion decisions for all academic institutions in Mexico. The empirical analysis examines the probability of promotion for each researcher enrolled in the National System of Researchers (SNI), and how this is affected by the committee's gender composition, exploiting the random assignment of evaluators. This is a simple and clear design that finds its strength in the randomized assignment of evaluators into promotion committees; hence, not relying on strong assumptions for identification. The results show that women in decision-making committees do not significantly favor the probability of promotion for women; however, having a gender mixed committee does favor the probability of promotion for all researchers. On the other hand women facing a male-only committee have a lower probability of promotion than men; this is important because it can contribute to the female under-representation currently evident in all academic fields within the Mexican Academia.
Drug War Violence and Behavior: A Field Experiment in Mexico
This paper studies the effects on pro- and anti-social attitudes of the sharp increase in violence experienced in Mexico after 2006, arisen from the governmental strategy known as the Drug War. This is done through a lab-in-the-field experimental approach with Mexican undergraduate students. The fighting of the Mexican government against drug tracking organizations has implied a 130,000+ death toll, and almost 2 million displaced people. Drastic changes in Mexicans' lives are part of the large unaccounted collateral damage. These changes go from the way institutions work, and businesses are born; to the way people make decisions, and relationships. The results shown in this study suggest that there is a strong effect of having been exposed to a Drug War-related incident on several behavioral measures. In particular, experience-type specific effects are found for the different levels of violence exposure. Interestingly, differential gender effects triggered by individual's exposure to Drug War-related violence are also found. Women with Drug War-related violence experience appear to have two different behaviors; depending on which type of violence experience they had; one where they become community builders and show solidarity, and the other one where they develop a lot of fear and feelings of vulnerability and show spite. These results shed some light on the public policy strategies that can be used to begin to overcome the already negative lasting effects of the Drug War.
Violence and Preventive Health Care in Mexico
This study estimates the effect of an unprecedented and sharp increase in violence in Mexico on preventive health care attitudes, and more classic health indicators. This is done by exploiting the unique circumstances of this spike in violence, in which individuals can be compared before and after this sharp increase. The data used in this study is a match of the INEGI monthly homicide reports at the municipality level with the individual level data from the Mexican Family Life Survey (MxFLS), which follows individuals through the different waves of the survey. Thus, the response for the same individual can be compared pre- and post- violence. The results presented suggest that having high levels of violence can affect the individual's health when measured by classic variables such as blood pressure, hospitalizations, body mass index, and mental health; and it can also affect the behaviors that could potentially help alleviate health problems, such as having a healthier lifestyle including non-smoking, spending time outdoors, sleeping well, going for wellness checkups, and having a positive mindset about oneself. This can result in self-reinforcing cycles of experiencing bad health outcomes in municipalities with high levels of violence.
An Introduction to Bounded Rationality and Behavioral Economics (in Spanish). Gaceta de Economia, ITAM, Special Issue 2010/2011.