Who Determines Mexican Trade Policy?

Jaime de Melo, Jean-Marie Grether and Marcelo Olarreaga

No 2176, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: This paper uses a political economy approach to analyze the pattern of Mexican manufacturing sector protection during the period of trade policy reforms between 1985 and 1989 when Mexico experiences both an important inflow of foreign direct investment (FDI), and a significant trade liberalization. The approach takes into account the potential role of FDI on endogenous tariff formation. It turns out that the data are coherent with the proposed approach in which trade policy formulation reflects political support and in which the sectoral presence of FDI has a strong influence on the determination of the pattern of tariff protection before and during the reform. In particular in Mexican manufacturing, FDI-intensive sectors received higher protection in import-competing sectors, though the move towards greater openness was associated with a reduction in the influence of industrial and FDI lobbying.

Keywords: Endogenous Protection; Foreign Direct Investment; Mexico (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F13 F23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999-06
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=2176 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: Who determines Mexican trade policy? (2001)
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:cpr:ceprdp:2176

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.cepr.org/ ... ers/dp.php?dpno=2176

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().