Alejandro Mungaray

Learning Economics By Servicing: A Mexican Experience of Service Learning in Microenterprises

This paper explores a complementary method of teaching economics founded in the service learning approach, and evaluates the effectiveness of service learning programs where final-year students of college engaged in Community Service provide microeconomic assistance to underprivileged microenterprises. This approach may be helpful not only to provide economic consulting and transfer some basic economic concepts to foster economic education among poor entrepreneurs, but also to create excitement in learning economics and meaningfulness of the concepts reviewed in class through embarking the students in communitarian activities. The effectiveness of the learning program is measured by estimating learning curves. The paper suggests that most of learning occurs outside the classrooms, and undertakes the hypothesis that service learning programs particularly in developing, countries can play an important role in supporting poor microenterprises.

FULL AND PART-TIME ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND THE SUPPLY OF ENTREPRENEURIAL EFFORT: EVIDENCE FROM MEXICAN MICROENTERPRISES

This paper aims to study the influence of pecuniary and non-pecuniary aspects on entrepreneurship. It attempts to fill a gap in terms of explaining how these aspects determine individual and household choices or constraints regarding entering entrepreneurship as either part time, with participation in labor markets, or as full time, as well as the corresponding supply of entrepreneurial effort. The study searches for insights on the relation between motivations intrinsic in either form of entrepreneurship and their effects on the supply of the entrepreneurial effort. Part-time micro entrepreneurs respond more to non-pecuniary aspects when maximizing their life choices, which divert them from profit maximization. However, full-time micro entrepreneurs are more sensitive to pecuniary factors and their choices regarding utility maximization are more compatible with profit maximization, albeit both groups are part of simple forms of entrepreneurship. The results identify the expectations placed on enterprises run by part-time and full-time entrepreneurial households in terms of their motivation and attitude toward the goal of profit making and consequently, to entrepreneurial supply and performance. Both groups may be relevant from the policy standpoint and employment in developing economies.

Vinculacion entre instituciones educativas y unidades productivas

Based on the view of economists who have discovered a borad relationship between economic development and education, the concept of the link between educational institutes and productive units in Mexico has focused on the benefits that both could obtain from research. This approach, which links the possibilities of high-quality research to the needs of the modern sectors in the economy, has ignored the potential of the link between training professionals and the needs of the economys traditional sectors, mainly in the small business sphere, for constructing a more solid social relationship between economy and education in Mexico. A proposal for curricular reorganization based on educational practices that would complement existing ones would help to redimension the possibilities of a broader, more useful link guided by well-being and employment as the basic objectives of society and as an element for steering public policy regarding education

University and Enterprises Linkages for Regional Development in México

This article evaluates the incentives to Mexico Innovation Program (PEI), from a regional perspective based on its contribution to the Regional Innovation System (RIS) of Baja California, between 2009 and 2013. Through the both additional behavioral and networks methodologies, the decision making process at companies, and the level of linkages among them, higher education institutions and governmental actors of the RIS is analyzed. The results show that by imposing the financing of innovation projects on the linking of business and scientific actors, PEI is helping to strengthen the RIS, encouraging 15% of its interactions.

Understanding the Mecanisms Behind the Profitability and Market Power of Marginalized Microenterprises

The paper analyzes the behavior of microenterprises in a context of imperfect competition in which they have the ability to profitably raise the market price of goods over their marginal cost. This allows them to survive and even be profitable despite the conditions under which they typically operate. We use an econometric model to conduct the analysis, in which we explain the Lerner index as a function of several qualitative variables previously classified by area of influence. We conclude that microenterprises are capable of being profitable and operating with market power through advertising and sales strategies due to the flexibility of the production process. In any case, the capacity to set prices is strongly influenced by the socioeconomic conditions of the market in which they operate.

Higher Education and Social Change in Mexico

This article proposes the emergence of a revitalized concept of linkage between higher education institutions (HEIs) and society in Mexico, which relies on the labor-market perspective and entrepreneurship to produce a new supply of trained social actors to support dynamic innovation. In this context, HEIs would help to transform the labor market toward a more entrepreneurially based employment system. This article contends that a reorganization of Mexican HEIs, which incorporates flexible educational practices that complement and coexist with the traditional ones, accompanied by a permanent quality evaluation of processes, would help to build stronger and more profitable linkages between institutions and society.