The money from the other

El pintor Eugenio Delacroix utilizó a una mujer con los pechos descubiertos para retratar la libertad, en una de las imágenes clásicas de la Revolución Francesa. Con ese antecedente iconográfico, el IFE escogió a una exconejita de Playboy como representación femenina de la democracia mexicana. La dama del vestido blanco ha sido motivo de controversias y parodias, pero también es síntoma de uno de los desafíos más importantes que tiene nuestro país: el manejo de los recursos públicos.…

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Dominoes

The expropriation of YPF by the Argentine government caused the Spanish Prime Minister commented that the decision would be very costly to the reputation of Latin America as a place to invest. Rajoy’s comments were widely disseminated. To minimize effects of the type predicted Rajoy, the governments of several countries (eg Mexico, Colombia and Chile) said they had no statist philosophy shared by the Government of Fernandez. Other governments (eg Brazil and Bolivia) also marked his distance…

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La fórmula de cochupo

Allied April, Congress passed the Federal Anti-Corruption Act. This new standard recognizes that for a bribe is required at least two participants: an officer and an individual. The new law assumes that corruption is not just a problem of authority, but a condition shared by citizens.

Discretion + opacity = Corruption. This definition states that arithmetic, and two participants, an act of cochupo also requires a murky context of arbitrariness. The public official has discretion to…

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Discrete pump

Tick, tock, tick, tock. This is the sound of a welcome package that will receive the president or the Proxim @ @ Mexico. Is the pump of the pension system, or rather, the arsenal of explosive devices that make up more than 100 pension plans funded with public money. This vast constellation of retirement programs include the retirement systems of federal workers, Pemex, CFE, state governments, public universities and other agencies of the Mexican state.

According to research by Pedro…

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Kid Stuff

Pablo: child labor is a complex economic phenomenon that has been demonized. Many of us heart to think of little ones instead of studying or playing have to go to work. However, we do not seem appropriate for children to work does not mean that Paul, child labor is a complex economic phenomenon that has been demonized. Many of us heart to think of little ones instead of studying or playing have to go to work. However, we do not seem appropriate for children to work does not mean that the best…

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efficiency of the health market

I concluded the column last week with the following statement: Information asymmetries (in the health market) are so deep that there are opportunities for unscrupulous service providers abuse their patients. Today will address this issue in order to propose public and private policies to remedy (at least partially) this market failure.

I’ll start with another assertion that most of my readers will accept based on their own experiences: the demand for medical services is insensitive…

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The magic bracelet

The jurist José Roldán Xopa defines the changes to the Mexican Constitution as a kind of magic bracelet. These bracelets, as well dress the doll, I promise a cure for cancer, the remedy to chronic fatigue and the evil eye. Changes in the legal framework are, in many cases, a placebo anesthetic to disguise the pain that afflict our Republic. I myself have tested first hand numbness and euphoria that can lead to constitutional reform.

In 2008, Congress passed a major innovation in the…

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The price of governing without waves

Advertising for a credit card tells us that some things are priceless. MasterCard ads are very right about people’s feelings, but his hypothesis does not hold for the life of nations. How much is social peace? What budget is enough to ensure political stability?

In 2010, Bolivian President Evo Morales decided to stop fuel prices mask the money from his meager purse. The move involved a 73% increase in petrol pumps. In response, Evo received an overdose of chocolate itself. Strikes,…

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Cautionary tale

Before most people were literate, were used cautionary tales to convey moral lessons to the younger generation. My godmother took very seriously the commitments it had acquired in my baptism, took advantage of my weekly visits to his house to instruct me in telling stories with moral virtues. Many of these stories have tragic endings. The stars do not traveled the path of virtue expensive paid their sins, while fulfilling the requirements of a virtuous life were rewarded.

The fable…

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The manual of the dictator

This is not a book for people who want to endorse their hopes on the nobility of the human spirit. The dictator’s manual is a vaccine against the ingenuity, a compendium of rules and incentives that determine the behavior of professional politicians. The authors, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith, dedicated the book to their favorite dictators.

The uncomfortable truth is that the text contains rules that are equally useful for the tyrant to the Democrat. The genocidal…

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