Regulacion de los servicios notariales en Mexico

Abstract

We study the regulation of notarial services in Mexico. These services are required to formalize several private acts, but many states unnecessarily restrict market entry, which benefits incumbent notaries and limits people's access to formality. Compared to international benchmarks, we observe few notaries per capita and an excessive scale per notary that makes it unlikely that "notaries have sole responsibility for their own draftsmanship". We estimate that increasing supply up to the level of the three states with the highest number of notaries per capita would decrease the lack of home ownership deeds by 23.5%; while employees and profits per notary would decrease 21.3% and 34.8%, respectively. On the other hand, employees and profits for all notaries would increase by 80.2% and 49.1%, respectively.