Regional economic growth in Mexico: Recent evolution and the role of governance. Eli Weiss, and David Rosenblatt. The World Bank.
July 2010.
There has been substantial research in recent years examining the regional evolution of economic growth across states in Mexico -- with a particular focus on the post North American Free Trade Agreement period. There is also a vast literature using cross-country regressions to examine institutional determinants of economic growth, including government transparency, or "corruption," as a key institutional variable. This paper uses more recently available data for Mexican states to both update the general state convergence/divergence literature, and incorporate into the analysis more recently developed state level indicators of institutional factors related to government transparency.

Reinvigorate NAFTA. Diana Villiers Negroponte. The Brookings Institution.
April 13, 2009.
Fifteen years after the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and with growing protectionist tendencies among the three countries there is a risk that NAFTA could become the European Free Trade Arrangement that withered to nothing in the 1980s. NAFTA was bold in its vision of opening markets and offering prospects for closer cooperation between Canada, Mexico and the United States, but the events of 9/11 have changed the vision that a North American community could emerge.

Rethinking Trade Policy for Development: Lessons From Mexico Under NAFTA. Eduardo Zepeda, Timothy Wise, and Kevin Gallagher. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
December 2009.
Despite an increase in trade, foreign investment, and productivity since NAFTA took effect in 1994, Mexico has been disappointed by slow economic growth and weak job creation. In addition, recession in the United States is hitting Mexico particularly hard, given its dependence on its northern neighbor. Mexico’s experience with NAFTA underscores the need to reform trade agreements between the United States and developing countries.

Setting the NAFTA Agenda on Climate Change. Jeffrey J. Schott, and Meera Fickling. Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics.
August 2009.
After years of inaction, the three partners in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)--Canada, Mexico, and the United States--now recognize the imperative to start the long-term process of substantially reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The Unending Campaign against NAFTA. Sidney Weintraub. Center for Strategic & International Studies.
February 2010.
Many Mexicans and Americans display vague misgivings about the North American Free Trade Agreement; their comments indicate that this is largely because the agreement did not turn out to be a development panacea. The core of Mexico´s growth problem, in the author's view, is political--namely, the inability to deal with structural problems affecting taxes, energy, education, labor markets, monopolies, and self-acting cushions against economic downturns. These failures left the country with little more than trade policy under NAFTA to generate economic growth, and trade policy cannot do the whole job.

Unequal Partners: The United States and Mexico. Sidney Weintraub. The Center for Strategic and International Studies.
April 20, 2010.
The author traces how each country’s policy was made toward the other -- one country dominant economically, and the other dependent on the other for its market and as a destination to which its nationals flee to seek greater opportunity. The fact that the two countries are neighbors makes the relationship more than one of asymmetry--this is true of most countries with respect to the United States--but a reality that adds dependence and dominance to the equation.