Research in progress:
My current research deals with firms and the production side of the
economy. Although firms would seem to be simple minded agents, strict
profit
maximizers, economists have not been entirely successful at explaining
their behavior. In particular, firm investment and financing
choices are still the focus of many research questions.
In my current projects I
study how firms finance production, why they choose to issue equity or
debt, with what maturity their debt is issued, and how their investment
and financing choices interact. I study the importance of
frictions such as taxes, costs of issuing debt and equity, adjustment
costs for capital, and bankruptcy costs, in order to improve our
understanding of firm behavior in the economy.
A second line of work looks at financial market development, and
international finance issues in Mexico, how Mexico's financial markets
are evolving and how firms deal with
changing conditions such as financial crises and trade liberalization.
WORKING PAPERS:
"Labor Hiring, Investment and Stock Return Predictability in the Cross Section"
"Financial Lumpiness and Investment"
"The growing Maket for Long Term Corporate Debt in Mexico", 2003.
“Firm Leverage and Firm Growth with Costs of Adjusting
Capital and Finance”
PUBLICATIONS:
"Switching
Regime Models for the Peso Exchange Rate", Journal of International Economics, January 2005.(with A. Werner)
"Contagion
of International Financial Crises: The Case of Mexico", in
International Financial Contagion,
,Claessens and Forbes eds., Kluwer, 2000. (with A. Werner).
"Moderate
inflation and the stability of the Inflationary Process," El Trimestre
Económico, (with A. Werner),1999. (working paper link only)