(Last update: December 10, 2010)

Students and colleagues interested in my research often ask about references that they could read to start an exchange of ideas, or to have a better understanding the topics that I am studying. Rather than providing them with an extensive list of readings, I prefer to list the documents or papers that I am currently reading, of those that I consider relevant in each of my areas of research (to learn about my current research agenda, click the icon labeled RESEARCH on the left side of this webpage):

If you use any of these materials, don't forget to cite!

This project has multiple stages. The first stage of the project will compare The securities laws in Mexico and the United States, and will analyze if the existing rules have the same effect on the allocation decisions of institutional investors.

The readings that I recommend in this case are:

Espinosa, Salvador (forthcoming 2011) “Financing Border Environmental Infrastructure: Where are we? Where to go from here?” SCERP Monograph Series. (Click here to download the pre-publication version).

La Porta, Rafael, Florencio López-de-Silanes and Andrei Shleifer (2003) What works in Securities Laws? NBER Working paper 9882. .

Cumming, Douglas and Sofia Johan (2007) Regulatory Harmonization and the Development of Private Equity Markets”. Journal of Banking and Finance 31, pp.3218-3250. .

Siegel, Jordan (2005) Can Foreign Firms Bond Themselves Effectively by Renting U.S. Securities Laws? Journal of Finance Economics 75, pp.319-359 .

A good starting point if you are interested in this topic is my doctoral dissertation: Espinosa, Salvador (2008). On Devolution, Revenue Sharing and Government Behavior: Assessing the Determinants of Subnational Fiscal Behavior and their Impact on the Creation of a Decentralized Tax System for Mexico . School of Public and Environmental Affairs (Indiana University, Bloomington, IN).

In this project, I used panel data analysis to determine the effects of revenue sharing transfers on the expenditure outcomes of state governments in Mexico. The results showed an atypical impact in some states, which allowed me to think that there may be factors that a quantitative model may not be capturing. I believe that there are informal mechanisms of decision making that have something to do with it. That is why my current research is focusing on the effect of "informal" rules and institutions on budget outcomes. If you are interested in this topic, here are some references that will be quite useful:

Spiller, Pablo T., and Mariano Tommasi (2009) The Institutional Foundations of Public Policy in Argentina (Cambridge University Press, New York).

Stein, Ernesto, and Mariano Tommasi, eds. (2008). Policymaking in Latin America: How Politics Shapes Policies (Inter-American Development Bank, Washington, DC).