Regimes of Economic Performance and Structural Dualism in the Dynamics of the Mexican Federal Entities, 1970-2006

This paper describes the dynamics of economic performance for the sub-national Mexican states from 1970 to 2006; the state variables used are the levels and the growth rates of per capita GDP. The authors situate this approach in a conceptual and methodological panorama of the existent literature. Starting from the regime concept, the paper introduces a distance notion to compare the observed paths and the clustering of the economies whose evolution is studied. The analysis shows that two fundamental clusters have existed: one of high and another of low performance, in addition to other transitory groups. In the high performance cluster the member’s number increases, while in the low performance cluster this number diminishes. At the same time, the article shows that the sub-national states that belong to the first cluster have had an increasingly similar performance. Also, it confirms that the sub-national states move from the low to the high performance cluster, and that the distance between both clusters has increased. The interpretation of these facts is based on the dual economy concept proposed by the development theory.