Public investment versus government consumption: how FDI shocks shape the composition of subnational spending in Mexico

Theodore Kahn and Zack Zimbalist

Review of International Political Economy, 2022, vol. 29, issue 2, 502-537

Abstract: During the 1990s, many developing countries underwent simultaneous processes of global economic integration and decentralization. As a result, subnational governments became increasingly important actors in the international economy, including through policies to secure investments from multinational corporations (MNCs). These efforts have the potential to affect the management of public resources at the subnational level. Breaking from the literature's focus on fiscal incentives, we highlight how “active” foreign investment incentives—including commitments to build new infrastructure and develop worker training programs—have shaped subnational public finances in Mexico. We demonstrate that FDI attraction affected how subnational governments exercised their growing policy authority and fiscal resources. Based on panel data from Mexican states between 1998 and 2017, we find that FDI shocks are associated with statistically and economically significant increases in public investment by state governments, and decreases in public sector consumption of goods and non-personnel services. A case study of a representative investment project in Puebla highlights the importance of active investment incentives as a causal mechanism linking FDI attraction and subnational spending outcomes. Our results illustrate how FDI attraction can affect the distribution of subnational public spending and also develop a theoretically-relevant distinction between passive and active investment incentives.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1824932 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:29:y:2022:i:2:p:502-537

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rrip20

DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1824932

Access Statistics for this article

Review of International Political Economy is currently edited by Gregory Chin, Juliet Johnson, Daniel Mügge, Kevin Gallagher, Ilene Grabel and Cornelia Woll

More articles in Review of International Political Economy from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().