This study examines the impact of credit extended by both commercial and development banks on exports, GDP, and FDI across different sectors in Mexico. The research lies within the broader context of financial sector development and its role in promoting regional development and economic growth. We use panel data techniques to compare traditional models that include only commercial bank credit with models incorporating development bank credit. Our results emphasize the different and complementary roles of commercial and development banks. The latter is crucial in addressing market failures and supporting long-term, socially and economically beneficial projects. The study concludes that development bank credit should be integrated into economic studies to better understand its contribution to sustainable growth. It suggests that policymakers should coordinate the roles of both banking sectors to foster a balanced and resilient economy.

How does the asymmetrical adoption of advanced communication technology affect economic and social sustainability? We examined the impact of Industry 4.0 on these two pillars of sustainability, focusing on the productivity divide arising from the asymmetric adoption of advanced technologies. We used a theoretical, general equilibrium model to describe a population within a knowledge economy with complete markets who gets exposed to a generally available advanced technology. Our main assumption was that only the more-knowledgeable individuals are able to adopt or fully benefit from the technology, leaving the unskilled ones behind. We demonstrate that this asymmetry prevents the property of positive sorting to apply, leading to a failure to sustain an equilibrium. The divide between knowledgeable and less-skilled individuals poses challenges for workers situated around the boundary, who face penalties in terms of employability and cost-effectiveness. Bridging this skill gap is crucial for inclusive growth. Policy recommendations include retraining programs, accessible education, and targeted policies promoting technology diffusion. As a possible extension, the model could be adapted to analyze collective bargaining agreements.

Students often infer from standard monopoly examples that an increase in demand must raise the profit maximizing price. Existing classroom exercises show that this conclusion need not hold, but typically demonstrate the result through separate numerical or functional form examples. This article develops a class activity based on the Generalized Pareto family, which includes linear and exponential demands as special cases, and can generate heavy tailed demands as well. A single parameter determines whether a positive shock raises, leaves unchanged, or lowers the monopoly price. Small groups first solve the three benchmark cases and then use the common Generalized Pareto specification to understand how they are connected. Students then derive the general closed form pricing rule and use the monopoly pricing condition to interpret the different outcomes. The activity is designed for upper-level undergraduate courses in intermediate microeconomics or industrial organization and requires only basic differentiation and familiarity with monopoly pricing. The article provides student questions, graphical illustrations, implementation guidance, and instructor solutions. An optional extension uses Extreme Value Theory to explain why Generalized Pareto demand is a useful local approximation to a broad class of demand functions at sufficiently high prices.