Dr. Víctor Guerrero became director of ITAM’s Master’s program in Risk Management after a long stint in the Department of Statistics. He received his Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1979) and started teaching at ITAM during the 1980s, becoming a fulltime professor in 1990.

“It is very fulfilling to me to try to find out things about the future based on the indications that the present and past give us.”
Víctor Guerrero, director of the Master’s in Risk Management

Seven years later he was appointed director of the department (1997-2004) for his recognized merits in research, teaching and public service (Ministry of Education, Central Bank and INEGI) and in private counseling (El Palacio de Hierro and the Rafael Preciado Hernández Foundation).

Víctor Guerrero has collaborated, as a speaker or guest professor, with various campuses in Europe and America, such as the University Carlos III of Madrid, the National University of Colombia, the Pontifical University of Chile and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, among others. His extensive curriculum includes dozens of academic articles and awards, the director of magazines and theses dissertations, which can be read at this link (updated until 2014).

Víctor Guerrero: A Statistician at the Service of Mexico

 

It should be noted that Dr. Guerrero is a member of the National System of Researchers with the highest grade: Level III. This actuary, trained at UNAM, developed his postgraduate interests in statistics, from delimited and precise areas of interest: econometrics, time series analysis and the study of linear models were the spearhead of a specialization that launched him toward research at the service of the country.

That was the reason why Víctor Guerrero obtained, during his sabbatical years, important positions in government projects for the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI). An example of this was his work as a research coordinator for the General Directorate of National Accounting and Economic Statistics (2004) and as Director of Development of Special Econometric Models in the General Directorate of the Public Information Service (2010).

From these experiences in the public sector the national accounts time series was born, successful tools that utilized the retropolation method, that is, when the variations in the price, volume and value indexes of an older series were applied to the values of the new data series to obtain a structured historical sequence. All of this allowed for the expansion and contextualization of an immense number of databases that were called retropolated series of the System of National Accounts of Mexico 1993-2015.

The intellectual production of Víctor Guerrero has been, therefore, a key element for the improvement of the statistical approaches in official institutions of national data measurement, such as the case of INEGI in Mexico. In 2005, the ITAM academic emphasized the need to improve measurement at all levels:

“In the past, the key was for the staff to be able to transcribe, classify, record and file data effectively and efficiently, whereas now this can be done almost automatically and what is required is greater involvement of the staff in data analysis tasks to produce information. If statistical institutes fail to do so, users will tend to downplay them and do the analysis themselves, if such a possibility is within their reach.”

REALITY, DATA AND SPACE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE OF STATISTICS AND GEOGRAPHY
Statistical analysis of economic time series generated with official data.

But Víctor M. Guerrero’s research is complemented by his educational work, as some of his texts on statistics are still an indispensable reference in the beginning courses of several university degrees.

 

The Work of Víctor M. Guerrero as a Professor

 

Dr. Víctor M. Guerrero considers teaching as one of the most enjoyable activities in his intellectual life. And he recognizes the personal contribution of teachers in developing their students’ potentials:

“It is the best reward I have had working at ITAM. And it is important that we realize that we are at a very high-level university. Our alumni and our students are very well prepared, they have the tools and the training that allow them to do things with the quality and professionalism typical of a student of this institution.”

Víctor Manuel Guerrero

Since he became the director of the Risk Management Master’s program in 2018, Dr. Guerrero proposed to know the teaching plan and the staff of professors participating in this interdisciplinary postgraduate course that integrates tools and approaches from Economics, Finance, Statistics and Information Systems. He explains this to Mundo ITAM:

“I have to fill the big gap left by professor Tapen Sinha. I must know what he did to resolve certain situations and conflicts that may arise and, of course, continue to maintain the high level of this postgraduate degree.”

Victor Guerrero has the advantage of having seen the birth of this Master’s degree when he was head of the Department of Statistics.

If you want to know more about this postgraduate degree of excellence, we recommend that you click on this image:

How Víctor Guerrero Spends his Free Time

 

When he takes a break from his statistics work, Dr. Guerrero likes to travel, either with his family or as a so-called “academic tourist”, to national and international conferences that take place nearly every year and are often complemented with brief stays at other universities around the world to teach a course, seminar or conference. These meetings reinforce the community of values among academics as well as the personal ties among colleagues. Víctor M. Guerrero also enjoys listening to classical music in this free time as a way of connecting his rational, logical mind to his emotions.

A good way to know the areas of research of Dr. Víctor Guerrero is to watch this video of his participation in a colloquium on Alternatives for the Identification of Economic Cycles, organized by INEGI in June 2017. His contribution begins at the minute 26.

Dr. Víctor Guerrero has been director of the Risk Management Master’s program at ITAM since August 1, 2018. We are sure that he will perform with the same tenacity and competence that he has already demonstrated throughout his professional career.