ABSTRACT

The manufacturing industry in Mexico is concentrated in the central and northern region of the country, which is characterized by high water stress. This condition foreshadows a complicated future scenario for the industry, such as decreasing water availability in the face of dynamic economic development. The objective of this research is to estimate the economic value of water in the industry. The applied method consists of estimating the marginal productivity of water from the technical function of the production of the manufacturing industry, modelled with a translogarithmic function. The goodness of this function is that it is flexible in the values assumed by its parameters, overcoming the rigidity of the Cobb Douglas function. The information was obtained from the 2014 Industrial Economic Census, which reports data from 476,753 economic units throughout the country. The main research findings are that: i) it is estimated that a cubic metre of water used in the manufacturing industry nationwide creates an added value of 7.8 dollars, and ii) – according to the cross-elasticities estimated in the model – the industry technology is not sufficiently flexible to the possibility of substituting water for work and raw materials, and complementary with capital.

摘要

墨西哥的制造业集中在该国中部和北部地区，其特点是水资源压力大。这种情况预示着该行业未来将面临复杂的情况，例如面对动态的经济发展，可用水量减少。本研究的目的是估计水在工业中的经济价值。所应用的方法包括根据制造业生产的技术函数估计水的边际生产力，并使用对数函数建模。该函数的优点在于其参数假定的值是灵活的，克服了 Cobb Douglas 函数的刚性。该信息来自 2014 年工业经济普查，该普查报告了来自 476 家的数据，全国753个经济单位。主要研究结果是：i) 估计全国制造业每立方米用水创造的增加值为 7.8 美元，以及 ii) – 根据模型中估计的交叉弹性 – 行业技术对用水代替工作和原材料的可能性不够灵活，并与资本互补。