Manufacturing structural change in Argentina and Brazil and the growing requirements of Industrial Policy: a comparative perspective

PÉREZ ARTICA, RODRIGO; GHIBAUDI, JAVIER; VARGAS, MARCO; BRITTO, JORGE

Heredia

Conferencia; 17th International Conference of Globelics; 2021

Globelics

Studies addressing industrial policy in both countries up to 2015 show that, despite its limited impact on structural change, there were multiple advances in the consolidation of institutional capacities of the public sector. Even with contradictions and in an irregular way, at the end of that period a more articulated and coherent approach was reached around strategic objectives of modifying the productive structure, moving away from the horizontal and merely based on the resolution of market failures approach, typical of the 1990s. However, a drastic change in orientation since the end of 2015 in both countries put these advances on hold, and in many areas reversed and dismantled them. We expose a series of internal and external limits that we believe contribute to understanding the evolution described.