Trade Protection and Capital Imports in the Mexican Manufacturing Sector

Several studies have investigated the link between trade protection and productivity in developing economies. Others have looked into the relationship between technology imports and in-house technology production. This paper contributes to the literature by estimating the effect of trade protection on purchases of foreign capital goods for a panel of Mexican manufacturing plants. Product-market tariffs lower the probability that a plant will import capital goods, while both output and input tariffs are associated with smaller quantities of capital imports. Capital imports are also associated with higher productivity. Thus, trade barriers may indirectly lower productivity by inhibiting the importation of foreign technologies through capital goods.     

Intra- and Inter-industry Externalities from Foreign Direct Investment in the Mexican Manufacturing Sector: New Evidence from Mexican Regions

This paper presents new empirical evidence on externalities from Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in several Mexican regions in the early 1990s. The main findings are threefold. First, the presence of FDI creates negative externalities within industries and positive externalities between industries through backward linkages. Second, FDI-externalities are stimulated by large technological differences between FDI and Mexican firms and by geographic concentration of industries. Third, we identify a substantial level of regional heterogeneity of the externality impact of FDI, in line with the notion that FDI may have contributed to processes of changing regional prosperity under trade liberalization. The findings also imply that maquiladora firms in the border states are generating positive externalities.     

The Limits of Pension Privatization: Lessons from Argentine Experience

The paper studies the operation of the mixed pension system established in Argentina in 1994. It points to the limitations that the new system has encountered to achieve some of the most important objectives of pension policy and pension reform. The analysis looks at the mechanisms affecting pension system performance, with particular attention to the way in which the new pension rules have interacted with the local macroeconomic, social, and political context. The empirical analysis of this experience is oriented to provide lessons for Argentina’s future reforms, as well as for many Latin American countries with similar pension arrangements.     

Trade Specialization in Latin America: The Impact of China and India

This paper examines the extent to which the growth of China and India in world markets is affecting the patterns of trade specialization in Latin American (LA) economies. We construct a measure of Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) by 3-digit ISIC sector, country, and year. This RCA accounts for both imports and exports. The empirical analyses explore the correlation between the RCAs of LA and the two Asian economies. Econometric estimates suggest that the specialization pattern of LA—with the exception of Mexico—has been moving in opposite direction to the trade specialization pattern of China and India. Labor-intensive sectors (both unskilled and skilled) probably have been negatively affected by the growing presence of China and India in world markets, while natural resource and scientific knowledge intensive sectors have probably benefited from China and India’s growth since 1990. JEL no.  F10, F14