Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Using state information we analyze the link among foreign investment and wage inequality in Mexico. We show the existence of an increase of the demand of qualified work, which has had major importance in the states with major reception of foreign direct investment (FDI), since also FDI tends to concentrate itself geographically. The regression results indicate that 1% of increase in the per capita foreign investment has an effect near to 6% of increase of the wage inequality. Meanwhile, when we consider only the set of states with major reception of foreign investment a negative effect of 12% is estimated.

Nowadays, the extent of the innovation activities for the productivity and the economic growth is evident in regional economics. A large body of theoretical and empirical evidence suggests that to achieve higher well-being levels of the population it is essential to reinforce the innovation capacity of the economies. In this work we measure the extent of agglomeration and the geographic concentration across Mexican states using an endogenous innovation approach estimated through econometric techniques. The size of the regional economies to assess the importance of the scale effects is also a central concern. Using data from the Mexican states, evidence is …