This paper examines how skin tone shapes intergenerational economic disparities across 25 Latin American and Caribbean countries. First, it analyzes the distribution of ethnoracial identities and skin tone, confirming Mestizo predominance and revealing how broad categories obscure substantial phenotypic diversity. Second, it documents non-linear gaps in income and education, with darker skin tones consistently linked to economic disadvantages. A variance decomposition shows that skin tone explains significant within-group variation, offering explanatory power beyond self-reported ethnoracial categories. Finally, using mothers’ education as a benchmark, the study provides novel cross-country evidence on skin tone gaps in absolute educational intergenerational mobility, revealing barriers to upward mobility for darker-skinned individuals. Robustness checks with machine-assessed skin tone data from Mexico, incorporating additional parental and contextual controls, confirm these disparities. These findings underscore the need to account for phenotypic variation when studying economic inequality in Latin America.

This paper investigates the immediate economic impacts of populist policies. In 2018, the Mexican president-elect held an unofficial referendum with less than 1% turnout to halt the construction of Mexico City’s New International Airport. I show the policy is plausibly a natural experiment with nationwide impacts, preceding other macroeconomic shocks and populist policies dismantling economic and institutional checks. Using the synthetic control method, I find a 3.3% to 4.5% GDP reduction one year post-cancellation. Consistent with the uncertainty trap framework, this decline is due to heightened economic uncertainty and a significant drop in investment, reinforcing each other and leading to a prolonged economic downturn. The results highlight how populist policies can impose immediate economic costs by creating uncertainty traps, even before implementing institutional changes.

We investigate the persistent impact of a colonial segregation policy on land values in modern Mexico City. During colonial times, Indigenous communities were confined, with varying degrees of success, to settlements known as pueblos de indios. Using historical records, we exploit quasi-random variation due to the pueblos’ catchment areas and use a Regression Discontinuity Design to estimate the causal effects of pueblos on land prices. We find a 5% land value penalty for areas affected by the colonial policy. The penalty is exacerbated for the pueblos formerly inhabited exclusively by Indigenous populations. Historical evidence and novel digitized maps reveal that these land value penalties have been driven over the past two centuries by low public goods provision, negative economic expectations, and the historical sorting of working-class individuals who built small housing structures that are second-nature factors. Moreover, in contemporary data, we observe discontinuities in housing overcrowding and public goods quality within the pueblos’ catchment areas. Our results underscore the repercussions of colonial policies on contemporary spatial equilibria, clarifying the mechanisms driving historical persistence and offering implications for urban policies.

Does partisan behavior during crises reflect fixed dispositions or malleable responses to elite cues? The two accounts predict similar partisan gaps when leaders reinforce supporters’ prior beliefs, but diverge when the same leader changes course. Mexico provides such a reversal: President López Obrador publicly undermined his government’s March 2020 distancing campaign, then endorsed vaccination on national television one year later. Combining high-frequency mobility data, electoral returns, and COVID-19 records, we estimate the partisan mobility gap using a difference-in-differences event study, complemented by a recentered lottery instrument for local Morena presence. The dynamics are more consistent with responsiveness to changing cues. Areas with stronger Morena support reduced out-of-home mobility by less after the distancing announcement; the pattern appears across electoral sections, municipalities, and local labor markets, and narrows as local infections rise. Vaccination later increased more in the same areas, with no comparable pattern in routine immunization. Higher-Morena areas also recorded more early cases and deaths, and a dynamic two-group SIRD model attributes roughly one quarter of these conditional gaps to differential mobility. The reversal is difficult to reconcile with fixed dispositions alone and more consistent with responsiveness to changing leader cues.

We provide causal evidence of skin tone discrimination using professional football (soccer) as a natural laboratory. Leveraging a computer-vision measure of skin tone and quasi-random variation in shot outcomes near the goal frame, we implement a Difference-in-Discontinuities design comparing narrowly scored goals to narrowly missed attempts. We find that Light-skinned players receive significantly larger boosts in post-match ratings than Tan- and Dark-skinned peers for identical actions. These disparities appear in both algorithmic and human-assigned evaluations and are concentrated in the subjective component of ratings. Season-level analyses reveal that biased evaluations translate into lower market valuations for darker-skinned players, despite equivalent performance. Evaluative bias, rather than differential treatment in contracts, emerges as a key driver of economic inequality in this high-information labor market. Our findings show how skin color discrimination can persist even in environments with transparent outcomes and extensive performance data.

This paper investigates the impact of the Mexican cadastre modernization program on local property tax revenue. We evaluate a comprehensive modernization initiative, which began in 2010 and included guidelines, technical assistance, and subsidies for local cadastres. Using panel data from 2000 to 2019 and a Difference-in-Differences approach, we find that municipalities adopting the program saw a 10% increase in property tax revenue within five years, rising to 30% after eight years. This effect varies significantly with local state capacity and the coordinating institution implementing the program. The program significantly enhances the state of local cadastres over the long-term. Municipalities that adopt the program are more likely to invest in staff training, implement comprehensive cadastral management systems, and digitize their registries. Our results highlight the importance of local capacities and coordination in realizing the benefits of decentralization and modernization policies.

Do cooperative firms foster local economic development? This paper examines Mexico, assembling a new georeferenced panel dataset at the 10 × 10 km grid-cell level for 2015–2023. Across multiple research designs, we consistently find that cooperative presence boosts local development, measured by nightlight intensity. An event-study design shows persistent extensive margin gains of 6–8% within four years of entry. To address selection concerns, we implement a shift–share IV strategy based on endogenous lagged-cooperative presence and plausibly exogenous sectoral growth shocks; the results imply that one additional cooperative increases nightlight density by about 2.7%. Complementary census evidence links cooperatives to higher schooling, home asset ownership, and decreases migration pressures. We also document stronger effects in Indigenous communities, where cooperatives have longer survival spells. Aggregate patterns suggest that cooperatives increase agricultural specialization but with clear productivity gains, while redistributive effects raise local disposable income and decrease poverty. These findings provide novel causal evidence that cooperatives can function as engines of inclusive local development.

This chapter revisits Guillermo Bonfil Batalla’s ‘México Profundo’ (1987) through the lens of contemporary empirical historical economics. In that work, Bonfil Batalla argued that beneath a Westernized facade of modern Mexico lies a “Deep Mexico”: a living but denied Indigenous civilization that continues to shape the country’s culture, identity, and social life. The first part of the chapter compiles historical census tabulations and harmonized microdata to document persistent patterns of Indigenous identity, inequality, and historical continuity. The historical process of Indigenous identification is multidimensional and endogenous, shaped by language, self-identification, phenotype, and geography. Despite improvements in basic services, Indigenous populations continue to face structural gaps in education and income. Beyond explicit identifiers, the second part of the chapter examines three channels through which ‘México Profundo’ continues to influence economic life. First, skin tone remains a consistent predictor of disadvantage, reflecting racialized inequality. Second, historical Indigenous presence structures spatial inequality and human-capital outcomes. Third, Indigenous institutions—both formal and informal—continue to shape development trajectories, depending on their interaction with markets and the state. Together, these patterns underscore that ‘México Profundo’ continues to illuminate key mechanisms linking Indigenous identity to economic and social outcomes in modern Mexico.