Industrial Policy in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico: a Comparative Approach

JUAN EDUARDO SANTARCANGELO; DANIEL SCHTEINGART; FERNANDO PORTA

Revue Interventions économiques / Papers in Political Economy

Social Sciences Research Council of Canada

Lugar: Quebec; Año: 2018 vol. 59 p. 1 - 42

1710-7377

Latin America has experienced a significant transformation in recent years. Despite some of the countries had major economic and social crisis at the end of the twentieth century, between 2003 and 2008 the region has experienced its most remarkable expansionary period since the 1970s. One of the new features registered during the period was the increase in the manufacturing sector where industrial policy combined traditional instruments to promote investment withother tools directed towards fostering innovation and technological modernization. At the same time, still using instruments and horizontal programs, in many countries there was a greater emphasis on the implementation of targeted and selective policies and to articulate the various instruments into a more general framework of productive development planning. The aim of this paper is to analyse the evolution of recent industrial policies (IPs) and their outcomes in four Latin American countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico. To do this, we will focus on the objectives and tools of IPs since 2003, their differences vis-à-vis those followed in the 1990s, and their changes throughout the period 2003-2015. We will also study the similarities anddifferences in national approaches depending on the macroeconomic cycles and the dynamic of the balance of payments, the specialization profiles and the strategies of development.