Abstract

ANDRADE ROSAS, Luis Antonio. Information asymmetry, an obstacle to government support in the time of COVID-19 in Mexico. Nóesis, Rev. cienc. soc. [online]. 2021, vol.30, n.60, pp.141-165.  Epub Sep 12, 2022. ISSN 2395-8669.  https://doi.org/10.20983/noesis.2021.2.8.

The COVID-19 pandemic has paralyzed businesses, causing a global economic crisis. In this paper, the support that the Mexican government intends to give to companies that fell into crisis is analyzed. The problem lies in a lack of knowledge of these companies: those that were in crisis before the epidemic and those that went into crisis because of it. To avoid economic and social losses, an asymmetric game is presented, the results show a mechanism to incorporate signals and improve uncertainty. The analysis deduces a threshold that determines a percentage of companies to support, showing that it is optimal to support 46% of the approximately 4 million MSMEs that exist in Mexico. The scarce official information limits the results, in addition to the fact that the model only shows a resource allocation mechanism and not an equilibrium, since the company player only emits an exogenous signal.

Keywords : Resource allocation; asymmetric information; COVID-19 effect; better responses; MSMEs.