Challenges for implementing industrial policy in Mexico

Although Mexico experienced high growth rates in the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s, the country has not fared well in terms of improvements in poverty and equality, growth in GDP, and job growth in some sectors in the last couple of decades. In conjunction, during the last twenty-five years, the traditional industrial policies of tariffs, local content requirements and quotas have been phased out of Mexico's policy toolkit. However, there have been some industrial policies implemented in Mexico such as investments in training, R&D, and infrastructure especially on the subnational (state) level. Although some state governments have been able to implement industrial policies, there are still many challenges that hinder opportunities to implement these policies such as the national ideology that supports liberalization, insufficient funding and resources, limited governmental capacity, lack of shared vision, and lack of credit available. Even though some states have been able to implement industrial policies in this climate, there are ways in which the government could improve opportunities for executing these policies such as creating a national framework that provides a lot of flexibility at the subnational level, providing more funding and capacity for subnational actors, requiring evaluation to measure the effectiveness of these programs and creating mechanisms that help officials generate a shared vision for strategic planning.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Leith, Kendra Sawyer

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Alice Amsden.

• Urban Studies and Planning.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/50111

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/50111