Recomendación

Research Department
Banco de México
Mexico city, Mexico

December 7, 1999

Admissions Committee
Graduate School
Princeton University

To whom it may concern:

I have knownFelipe since mid 1998, when he began working as my research assistant at the Research Department in the Mexican central bank. I hired Felipe for our division because we wanted someone with interestin economics but with a solid understanding of mathematics. Since that time he has been under my direct supervision and has proved to be a great asset for this area. He not only has incredible abilityfor math and statistics, but has also delved completely into economic research, surpassing in knowledge all of his peers, which do have an undergraduate training in economics.

He hasco-authored three papers with me. One of them, on inflation, already published as a Bank working paper, another one, a theoretical and empirical piece on the behavior of the Mexican peso, is forthcoming,and one on contagion of international financial crises, to be presented in an IMF-World Bank conference on the topic. He will be the first analyst, in the history of our department, co-authoring morethan one of the central bank’s working papers. During this period that we have worked together I have realized that Santiago, in addition to having the intellectual and analytical capacity to succeed asa graduate student, is the most creative research assistant I’ve had, which indicates he has the potential to become an outstanding academic.

He actively participates in our weeklyseminars and is always interested in the conferences we organize with Economists from other institutions, approaching most of them for further discussion. He was in charge of the seminar presentation of ourpaper and he did a great job, answering the questions from senior staff members and showing

he thoroughly understood the issues and the ideas present in our paper. He is very competitive,...