Editorial

Foundations and Debate

• Carlos Marichal
  

  Financial crises and debates on the first globalization: reflections from Latin American economic history Abstract: This essay explores the relations between the history of great financial crises and the debates on the nature of what have been called first and second periods of globalization (1870-1914) and 1980- 2008). We argue that actually many aspects of economic globalization were already present in the previous period of 1850-1873. In the second place, we argue that economic internationalization intensified after 1880 but was certainly homogeneous on a world scale. Finally we ask if the year 1914 marks the end of early globalization or if this continued during the 1920s, before the financial collapse of 1929.

• Julio Boltvinik
  

  Aggregate measures of poverty. Heuristics of traditional measures. Critical appraisal of measures sensitive to the distribution among the poor, and proposal of a measure sensitive to the distribution between poor and non-poor Abstract: This article refers only to aggregate poverty measures which are distinguished from poverty measurement methods. It provides an approach to those aggregate measures which pretends to have some originality; states a critique of aggregate poverty measures sensitive to the distribution among the poor; and based on this critique proposes a new aggregate measure in which inequality among the poor is replaced by inequality between the poor and the non-poor. The article starts by describing and interpreting the most usual aggregate poverty measures, emphasizing those which are sensitive to the distribution among the poor, and particularly Sen’s Poverty Index is discussed with more detail. A critique of aggregate indices sensitive to the distribution among the poor is then presented. This critique in centred on the assumption of diminishing marginal well-being below the poverty line, always present (but mostly implicit) in these indices. Conceptual arguments and empirical evidence is discussed which point strongly against this assumption. Lastly, a new Relative Poverty Index is proposed, which replaces sensitivity to inequality among the poor with sensitivity to inequality between the nonpoor and the poor, which is the pertinent inequality from the point of view of the conception of relative poverty.

• Jaime Aboites / Tomás A. Beltrán
  

  Institutional erosion of the Innovative Triad Abstract: The purpose of this paper is the analysis of technological capabilities that Mexican Petroleum Institute (Instituto Mexicano del Petróleo- IMP) built over the last three decades of the twenty-century. These capabilities are oriented to the generation of key inputs in the production of fuels: catalysts for petroleum refining. There are identified three stages in developing catalysts that requires PEMEX-Refining: (i) the construction of the basic technological and institutional capacities, (ii) formation of the Triad Innovative involving Pemex-Refining, IMP and global companies involved on the catalysts innovation process (iii) the transition characterized by the institutional erosion of the Triad Innovative without the emergence of an alternative strategy. The central argument of this paper is that the IMP, under the explicit influence of PEMEX, achieved moderate success in the refining catalyst production during the period 1976-1998. However, during the rise of open trade policies (NAFTA) and privatization of state enterprises, the R&D activity in catalysts initiates an uncertain and negative stage that erodes the Triad Innovative.

Articles and Miscellany

• Humberto Monteón González / Gabriela María Luisa Riquelme Alcantar
  

  Time of Revolution: technical education during the storm Abstract: In the schools of arts and trades, the workshops were the backbone of the education provided in these schools. At the junction of the 19th and 20th centuries, preparation for craftsmen in various trades, in accordance with the requirements of the time, evolved towards the formation of specialized workers and heads of workshop, and in the context of the Mexican Revolution, by decision of constitutionalism, through curricular reform, towards formation of engineers in the branchs of mechanics and electricity.

• Mijael Altamirano Santiago / Abigail Martínez Mendoza
  

  The comparative method and the neo-institucionalism as methodological framework for research in the Social Science Abstract: This paper describes the meaning and direction taken by the comparative method and neoinstitutionalism as a methodological tool in the study of phenomena and social facts, as well as the treatment of political and governmental institutions.

• Sergio López Ramos
  

  The first explanations of psychosomatic in Mexico Abstract: The work is about the topic of the corporal and psychosomatic in Mexico in the 20th century. An exhibition is done on the importance of the health, in a reading of information and the discussion on what it is important to read of them. The topic of the psychosomatic is approached from the psychoanalysis by a group of mexicans doctors that were formed in psychiatry. The discussion focused on the process of search for the origin of the disease without an etiology that relates to the virus and the bacteria.

• Jorge Silva García
  

  Why is necessary the economic and financial education in the universities? Abstract: International experience shows that there are many reasons for economic and financial education to the people of a country: increase savings and the levels of investment, increased resources for funding the production sector, economic stability, etc. But in the case of Mexico, three reasons must be added. First, the high levels of unemployment and underemployment affecting young people and with a greater degree of schooling; second, the small number of companies, most of which have a low rate of productivity and low capacity generating jobs and, third, the increased participation of children in illicit activities due to lack of opportunities. An economic and financial education programme for young students and future professionals will enable them to acquire a global vision of the tightness of the labour market in Mexico and develop the basic skills to understand the need to create new enterprises that produce goods and services of high value added, enabling them to compete in global markets. Thus, addition of resolve their particular working situation, they will contribute to stimulating job creation and economic growth.