7 Trade and Industrial Policy Reform in Latin America
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International Monetary Fund
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English
Print Publication Date:
28 Sep 1995
Keywords:
BOOK; government; country; exchange rate; central bank; trade reform; liberalization policy; trade diversion; trade liberalization reform; trade distortion; Trade liberalization; Tariffs; Exports; Real exchange rates; Trade policy; Central America; North America; Caribbean; South America
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Abstract

Most Latin American countries began to open up to the rest of the world in the late 1980s. This process is perhaps the most impressive achievement of the structural adjustment programs that followed the debt crisis and has effectively put an end to more than four decades of active industrial policies based on import substitution.

Most Latin American countries began to open up to the rest of the world in the late 1980s. This process is perhaps the most impressive achievement of the structural adjustment programs that followed the debt crisis and has effectively put an end to more than four decades of active industrial policies based on import substitution.

However, the process leading to these trade reforms has not been easy. As recently as the mid-1980s, the protectionist view was still influential in many parts of Latin America. In fact, the debt crisis of 1982 provided a new impetus to the protectionist paradigm. In a way that resembled the arguments of the 1930s and 1940s, a number of authors interpreted the crisis as a failure of “the world economic order” and argued that the only way for Latin America to avoid a recurrence of this type of shock was to further isolate itself from the rest of the world through selective protectionism and government intervention (Griffith-Jones and Sunkel, 1986). This perspective was vividly defended by Lance Taylor (1991, p. 119), who argued that the “trade liberalization strategy is intellectually moribund” and that “development strategies oriented internally may be a wise choice towards the century’s end” (p. 141).

In the mid-1980s, Latin America’s external sector was the most distorted in the world. For example, as can be seen in Table 7.1, Central America had the highest degree of import protection in terms of both tariff and nontariff barriers (NTBs)—among developing countries, with South America following closely behind. However, by 1987–88 it became apparent that a permanent solution to the region’s economic problems would imply a fundamental change in its development strategy. In particular, policymakers began to realize that the long-standing protectionist trade policy was at the heart of the region’s problems. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, and with the assistance of the multilateral institutions, a larger and larger number of countries began to reduce their levels of protection and to reform their development views. Reforms on the trade front have accelerated: tariffs have been drastically slashed, in many countries import licenses and prohibitions have been completely eliminated, and a number of nations are actively trying to sign free trade agreements with other Latin American countries as well as with the United States.

Table 7.1.

Import Protection in the Developing World, 1985

(In percent)

article image
Source: Erzan and others (1989).

Includes tariffs and para-tariffs.

Measures as a percentage of import lines covered by nontariff barriers. Dat a on both tariffs and NTBs reported here are weighted averages.

This paper documents and evaluates the process of trade reform in Latin America.1 The next section provides an analytical and historical discussion of the consequence of the traditional industrial policies in Latin America. A distinction is made between policies based on strict import substitution and policies that combined high and uneven import tariffs with export promotion. The paper deals also with the analytics of trade liberalization reforms, including a discussion of the role of supporting policies in assuring the success of trade liberalization reforms. Important questions related to the sequencing of economic reform are discussed in some detail. In particular, emphasis is given to the issue of the appropriate sequencing of stabilization and trade reform policies. The extent of trade reform in Latin America is discussed, and some of the results of the reforms are analyzed. The analysis concentrates on productivity and exports and deals with the experiences of several countries. The role of real exchange rates in a trade liberalization process is carefully taken into account, and the recent trend toward real appreciation in most countries in the region is assessed. Finally, the paper studies the recent attempts at reviving regional integration agreements, the future prospects for free trade agreements with the United States, and the significance of the recent agreement of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) for the Latin American countries.

Protectionism, Industrial Policy, and Export Promotion

The recent trade liberalization programs in Latin America have sought to reverse protectionist policies that for decades have been at the heart of the region’s development strategy. To place these reforms in perspective, it is useful to first analyze the way in which the protectionist policies affected the economic structure of Latin America and to discuss what the expected effects of the liberalization policies were.

Economic Consequences of Protectionist Industrial Policies

The Great Depression had a fundamental impact on the Latin American economies. Terms of trade plummeted—in Brazil, Chile, and Colombia by almost 50 percent—capital inflows stopped, and real income was severely reduced. The effects of the decline in the worldwide demand for raw materials in 1929–30 were compounded by the adoption of protectionist policies in the United States and Europe through, for example, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in 1930 and the British Abnormal Importations Act of 1931.

Most Latin American countries reacted to these events by abandoning convertibility, devaluing their currencies, and imposing tariff barriers. Diaz-Alejandro (1981) has described these policies as follows:2“Exchange rate devaluations were not the only measures undertaken. . . . [T]here were also increased tariffs, import and exchange controls, bilateral clearing agreements and … multiple exchange rates” (p. 340).

It has generally been thought that sustained protectionism became dominant throughout Latin America in the early 1930s, if not earlier.3 However, Thorp (1992) has recently argued that in the mid- to late 1930s a number of countries in the region—especially Argentina, Brazil, and Chile—implemented substantial trade liberalization policies aimed at encouraging openness and outward orientation. She has argued that export expansion played a key role in the Latin American recovery toward the end of the 1930s. The eruption of World War II put an end to this episode of export-led growth, and once again the Latin American countries responded to the adverse world shocks by resorting to protectionism and inward-looking policies. However, the end of the foreign disturbances was not followed by a new period of openness and the region’s reinsertion into the world economic system. By the late 1940s and early 1950s, protectionist policies based on import substitution were well entrenched and constituted, by far, the dominant perspective (Diaz-Alejandro, 1981).

The creation of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) provided an intellectual underpinning for the protectionist position. In particular, the writings of Raúl Prebisch (1950) 4 and Hans Singer (1950) imparted an aura of respectability to import-substitution policies. These authors’ thinking was based on two fundamental premises: (1) a secular deterioration in the international price of raw materials and commodities would result, in the absence of industrialization in the developing countries, in a widening of the gap between rich and poor countries, and (2) to industrialize, the smaller countries required temporary assistance in the form of protection for the newly emerging manufacturing sector. This reasoning was closely related to the infant industry argument for industrialization.5 Between the 1950s and 1970s, a large number of development economists embraced the inward-oriented view and devoted enormous energy to designing planning models that relied heavily on the import-substitution ideas. This view became dominant and was taught with great zeal in most Latin American universities.6

Prebisch’s position developed as a criticism of outward orientation, which he considered to be incapable of permitting the full development of the Latin American countries. He argued that development required industrialization through import substitution and that this approach could be “stimulated by moderate and selective protection policy” (Prebisch, 1984, p. 179). Eventually, however, the degree of protection to the incipient industries became anything but moderate, as more and more sectors required additional tariffs and other types of government support to continue facing foreign competition (Balassa, 1982, and Little, Scitovsky, and Scott, 1970).

During the early years of import substitution, important heavy industries were created in the larger countries, and the basis for the development of a domestic manufacturing sector was set. During the 1950s, the industrial sector grew at rapid real rates, topping in some countries—Brazil and Mexico, for example—8 percent a year (Elias, 1992). With industrialization, however, an array of restrictions, controls, and often contradictory regulations evolved. In most countries, lobbying developed swiftly as a way to secure the rents created by the maze of controls. It was, in fact, because of import restrictions that many of the domestic industries were able to survive. As a consequence, many of the industries created under the import-substitution strategy were quite inefficient. Krueger (1981) and Balassa (1982) found that this inward-looking strategy generated rentseeking activities and resulted in the use of highly capital-intensive techniques, which hampered the creation of employment throughout the region.

In most countries, starting in the late 1940s, import substitution was accompanied by an overvalued domestic currency that precluded the development of a vigorous nontraditional export sector.7 In an early study using data from the 1960s, Balassa (1971) found that the Latin American countries in his sample—Brazil, Chile, and Mexico—had some of the most distorted foreign trade sectors in the world. These findings coincide with those obtained by Little, Scitovsky, and Scott (1970) in their pioneer study on trade policy and industrialization in the developing world. These authors persuasively argued that the high degree of protection granted to manufacturing in Latin America resulted in serious discrimination against exports, resource misallocation, inefficient investment, and deteriorating income distribution. They further argued that the reversal of the protectionist policies should be at the center of any reformulation of Latin America’s development strategy. The agricultural sector was particularly harmed by real exchange rate overvaluation. The lagging of agriculture became one of the most noticeable symptoms of many countries’ economic problems of the 1950s and 1960s. The overvaluation of the real exchange rate played an important political role during this period because it kept down the prices of imported goods consumed by urban dwellers.8

In many countries—especially in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela—fiscal imbalances became a staple of government policies. However, the dominant view did not consider this to be an overly serious matter; it was, in fact, believed that fiscal disequilibrium was only indirectly related to inflation.9 The inflationary problem became particularly serious in Chile, where the rate of increase of consumer prices averaged 36 percent a year during the 1950s, reaching a peak of 84 percent in 1955.

The discouragement of export activities took place through two main channels: first, import tariffs, quotas, and prohibitions increased the cost of imported intermediate materials and capital goods used in the production of exportables, reducing their effective rate of protection. In fact, for years a vast number of exportable goods, especially those in the agricultural sector, had negative protection of their value added. Second, the maze of protectionist policies resulted in real exchange rate overvaluation that reduced the degree of competitiveness of exports. This antiex-port bias explains the poor performance of the export sector, including the inability to aggressively develop nontraditional exports, during the twenty years preceding the debt crisis. Paradoxically, policies that were supposed to reduce Latin America’s dependency on the worldwide business cycle ended up creating a highly vulnerable economic structure where the sources of foreign exchange were concentrated in a few products intensive in natural resources, and where imports were concentrated in a relatively small group of essential goods (United Nations, 1992).

A second general and important consequence of traditional protective trade policies was the creation of a manufacturing sector that, in most countries, was largely inefficient. Instead of granting short-term protection to help launch new activities, high tariffs, quotas, and prohibitions became a fixture of the region’s economic landscape. An important consequence of the pressures exercised by lobbyists and interest groups was that the protective structure in Latin America became extremely uneven, with some sectors enjoying effective tariff rates of more than 1,000 percent, and others suffering from negative value-added protection (Edwards, 1992). Moreover, as is argued below, in the 1970s interest group pressures resulted in the superimposition of an array of special export subsidies for a handful of firms that were deemed to be strategically important (Nogués, 1990).

The protectionist policies also had serious effects on labor markets. In particular, the protection of capital-intensive industries affected the region’s ability to create employment. A number of studies have shown that in developing countries more open trade regimes have resulted in higher employment and in a more even income distribution than protectionist regimes. For example, after analyzing in detail the experiences of ten countries, Krueger (1983) concluded that exportable industries tended to be significantly more labor intensive than import-competing sectors. In the conclusions to this massive study, Krueger argues that employment has tended to grow faster in outward-oriented economies and that the removal of external sector distortions will tend to help the employment creation process in most developing countries. These results were broadly supported by other cross-country studies, including those by Balassa (1982) and Michaely, Papageorgiou, and Choksi (1991).

In terms of income distribution, the protection system largely benefited local industrialists—in particular, those able to obtain import licenses and concessions—and urban workers, but at the cost of depressing the incomes of rural workers. As discussed in Edwards (1993b), for example, during the 1970s income distribution was significantly more unequal in Latin America than in Asia.

In summary, although several decades of protectionist policies succeeded in creating an industrial sector in Latin America, this goal was achieved at high cost. Exports were discouraged, the exchange rate became overvalued, employment creation lagged behind, and massive amounts of resources—including skilled human resources—were withdrawn from the productive sphere and devoted to lobbying for an ever-favorable treatment of different sectors of the economy.10 An increasing number of comparative studies in the 1980s made the shortcomings of the Latin American development strategies particularly apparent. In the aftermath of the debt crisis, the long stagnation, and even retrogression, of the region’s export sector—with an average rate of decline of 1 percent a year between 1965 and 1980—became particularly painful to the local public, analysts, and policymakers.

Industrial Policy and Export Promotion

As discussed above, after an auspicious beginning, the import-substitution strategy began to run into difficulties during the late 1950s and early 1960s. At that time most of the obvious substitutions of imported goods had already taken place, and the process was rapidly becoming less dynamic (Hirschman, 1968). For example, during the 1960s total real industrial production grew in most countries at one-half the annual rate of the previous decade (Elias, 1992). Also, an increasing number of politicians and economists began to agree that Latin America was facing long-run economic problems. It was generally recognized that the easy phase of the import-substitution process had ended and that inflation and the recurrent crises of the external and agricultural sectors had become serious obstacles to growth. Furthermore, the increasingly unequal distribution of income and the unemployment problem represented serious challenges to any new economic program. Although most experts pointed out that low rates of domestic savings and investment represented an important obstacle to growth, they differed markedly on some other aspects of their diagnosis and on the proposed policy packages to take the country out of its relative stagnation.11 At this time, the simple import-substitution policies came under attack from two flanks: on the one hand, a small number of economists, sometimes associated with the monetarist position, argued for orthodox stabilization programs based on fiscal restraint and a greater reliance on market forces.12 On the other hand, a growing number of intellectuals in the Marxist tradition—including the group known as dependencistas—argued that there was too little government presence in economic decisions and postulated a massive move toward full-fledged planning, in the Eastern European style.13

Facing this two-pronged attack, the structuralist thinkers eventually concluded that their policies had to be reformed. Fishlow (1985) notes that the dominant economic view in Latin America experienced two important developments during the 1960s. First, import substitution was expanded from the country sphere to the regional level, and a number of attempts to create regional trading agreements were undertaken. Perhaps the most comprehensive of these was the Andean Pact created in 1969 and grouping Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and, later, Venezuela. However, the proposed regional arrangements did not tackle the high levels of protection and distortions imposed in the previous twenty years. In fact, in the Andean Pact, the proposed common external tariff was extremely high and uneven, representing the expansion of the traditional structuralist thinking to a supranational level (see Edwards and Savastano, 1988). The evolution of integrationist attempts in the region is addressed in greater detail below.

The second development discussed by Fishlow (1985) was the recognition of the importance of capital inflows as a way to supplement domestic savings and finance higher rates of capital accumulation. However, this option was centered around official capital flows through multilateral institutions and did not give private flows a significant role. Also, no specific recommendations were made to alter the basic incentive structure of the economy or to provide a greater role to market forces in long-run development strategies.

In the late 1960s and the 1970s, the structuralist view continued to evolve, as it became increasingly evident that the dynamism of most Latin American economies was in rapid decline. In particular, in a number of countries the expansion of exports became an important component of otherwise traditional economic programs. Brazil provides, perhaps, the clearest example of a strategy for expanding manufacturing exports with the aid of an aggressive industrial policy based on export subsidies, tax allowances, and subsidized credit to selected industries. At the macroeconomic level, this industrial policy was supplemented by an active crawling peg exchange rate system aimed at avoiding real exchange rate overvaluation.14

Although this policy resulted in a very rapid rate of growth of GDP and manufacturing exports, Brazil’s economic base remained somewhat rigid and fragile.15 As Fishlow (1991) has argued, after decades of an industrialization strategy based on protective policies, Latin America, and especially Brazil, had relatively high wages and its exports could not become the “engine of growth” as in East Asia. In spite of expanding at a rapid pace, exports still failed to relax the required foreign exchange constraint that for years had affected most countries. As a consequence, during the 1970s virtually every country in the region resorted to heavy foreign borrowing to obtain foreign exchange. The rapid accumulation of debt made these economies particularly vulnerable, as the region painfully learned in 1982.

Why wasn’t export promotion more successful in Latin America? After all, industrial policies explicitly aimed at encouraging exports were implemented aggressively and very successfully in many East Asian countries. For example, in the 1960s an aggressive export-promotion scheme became an important complement of the Korean trade liberalization strategy. Throughout the years, exports have been subsidized through a number of channels, including (1) direct cash subsidies (until 1964); (2) direct tax reductions (until 1973); (3) interest rate preferences; (4) indirect tax reductions on intermediate inputs; and (5) tariff exemptions to imported intermediate materials.16 Kim (1991) has recently calculated that these subsidies were reduced from 23 percent to zero between 1963 and 1983. He has argued, as others have, that in Korea, export subsidies played an important role during the earlier years of the country’s export boom.17 A recent massive study undertaken by the World Bank (1993a) has explored with great detail the reasons for the East Asian export success. It is argued that in most cases the government organized “contests” among private firms, with export performance as the main criterion to determine “winners.” Those firms with a strong export record were rewarded with access to preferential credit and other types of special treatment. This study suggests that by picking exports as the general activity to be rewarded, rather than production in a particular sector (for example, steel), the East Asian countries avoided major distortions and, in particular, were able to minimize the extent of rent-seeking activities. It may be argued that while the Latin American export-promotion policies—especially those developed in Brazil—subsidized selected industries that were deemed to have export potential, East Asian government policies were based on whether the final destination of production was, in effect, the world market.

Lin (1988) has compared trade policies in Korea, Taiwan Province of China, and Argentina. His computations indicate that in the 1970s the overall rate of effective protection was 10 percent in Korea, 5 percent in Taiwan Province of China, and 47 percent in Argentina. The contrast was even greater in the manufacturing sector, where the effective rates of protection were −1 percent in Korea, 19 percent in Taiwan Province of China, and almost 100 percent in Argentina. These differences in protective rates affected relative incentives, generating a substantial antiexport bias in Argentina. Modern theories of economic growth have linked openness with productivity growth: more open economies tend to engage in technological innovation faster, exhibiting more rapid productivity improvements. According to Lin (1988), labor productivity increased at an annual rate of 8.7 percent in Korea during 1973–85 and at only 0.5 percent a year in Argentina. The vigorous growth experienced by other East Asian countries—including the second generation “miracle” countries of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand—since the late 1980s has added impetus to the idea that a development path based on openness and market orientation can be extremely rewarding. Increasingly, Latin American leaders are turning toward East Asia for inspiration and economic partnership.

A number of authors have argued that the conduct of macroeconomic policy constitutes a second crucial difference between East Asia and Latin America (see Sachs, 1987). As has been extensively documented by a number of authors, inflation has been significantly higher in the Latin American countries than in the East Asian countries. Moreover, Latin America has also been affected by higher inflation variability and real exchange rate volatility. The greatest advantage of a stable macroeconomic environment is that it reduces uncertainty, thereby encouraging investment. Moreover, to the extent that the real exchange rate is stable, investment in the tradables sector will increase, as will exports. Sachs (1988) and Fischer (1988), among others, have pointed out that in the adjustment-cum-reform process, the achievement of macroeconomic stability should precede trade liberalization in the developing countries. Based on the experiences of Korea, Taiwan Province of China, and Japan, Sachs (1988) has argued that massive and deep tariff reduction should take place only after macroeconomic stabilization is firmly in place.18 This issue is addressed with greater detail in the next section.

Trade Liberalization: Expected Results and Transitional Problems

The main objective of trade liberalization programs is to reverse the negative consequences of protectionism and, especially, its antiexport bias. According to basic theory, trade liberalization will result in a reallocation of resources, according to comparative advantage, in a reduction of waste, and in a decline in the prices of imported goods.19 Moreover, to the extent that the new trade regime is more transparent—for example, through a relatively uniform import tariff—it is expected that lobbying activities will be greatly reduced, releasing highly skilled workers from unproductive jobs. According to traditional international trade theory, it is expected that once negative effective rates of protection and overvalued exchange rates are eliminated, exports will not only grow rapidly, but will also become more diversified.

From a growth perspective, the fundamental objective of trade reform is to transform international trade into the engine of growth. In fact, newly developed models of endogenous growth have stressed the role of openness.20 For example, Romer (1989) has developed a model in which, by taking advantage of larger markets—the world market—an open economy can specialize in the production of a larger number of intermediate goods and, thus, grow faster. Other authors have recently concentrated on the relationship between openness, technological progress, and productivity growth. Grossman and Helpman (1991) and Edwards (1992), for example, have argued that openness affects the speed and efficiency with which small countries can absorb technological innovations developed in the industrial world. This idea, based on an insight first proposed by John Stuart Mill, implies that countries with a lower level of trade distortions will experience faster growth in total factor productivity and, with other things being equal, will grow faster than countries that inhibit international competition.21

In recent papers, a number of authors have tested the general implications of these theories using cross-country data sets.22 Although different empirical models have yielded different results, the general thrust of this line of research is that countries with less distorted external sectors appear to grow faster. As Dornbusch (1990) pointed out, openness possibly affects growth through not just one channel, but through a combination of channels, including the introduction of new goods, the adoption of new methods of production, the reorganization of industries, the expansion of the number of intermediate goods available, and the conquest of new markets that permit the expansion of exports.

The importance placed by liberalization strategists on the reduction of the antiexport bias has resulted in significant emphasis on the role of exchange rate policy during a trade reform effort. A number of authors have argued that a large devaluation should constitute the first step of trade reform. Bhagwati (1978) and Krueger (1978) have pointed out that in the presence of quotas and import licenses, a real exchange rate depreciation will reduce the rents received by importers, shifting relative prices in favor of export-oriented activities and, thus, reducing the extent of the anti-export bias (see Krueger, 1978, 1981, and Michaely, Papageorgiou, and Choksi, 1991).

Speed and Sequencing of Trade Liberalization Reform

Two fundamental problems must be addressed in the transition toward freer trade: first, it is important to determine the adequate speed of reform. For a long time, analysts argued for gradual liberalization programs (Little, Scitovsky, and Scott, 1970; Michaely, 1985), because they maintained that gradual reforms would give firms time to restructure their productive processes and, thus, would result in low dislocation costs in the form of unemployment and bankruptcies. These reduced adjustment costs would, in turn, provide the needed political support for the liberalization program. Recently, however, the gradualist position has been under attack. There is increasing agreement that slower reforms tend to lack credibility, inhibiting firms from engaging in serious restructuring. Moreover, the experience of Argentina in the 1970s has shown that a gradual (and preannounced) reform allows those firms negatively affected by it to lobby successfully against reductions in tariffs. According to this line of reasoning, faster reforms are more credible and thus tend to be sustained over time (Stockman, 1982).

The thinking on the speed of reform has also been influenced by recent empirical work on the short-run unemployment consequences of trade liberalization. Contrary to conventional wisdom, a World Bank study directed by Michaely, Papageorgiou, and Choksi (1991) on liberalization episodes in 19 countries strongly suggests that, even in the short run, the costs of reform can be small. Although contracting industries will release workers, those sectors that expand as a result of the reform process will tend to create a large number of employment positions. The study shows that, in sustainable and successful reforms, the net effect—that is, the effect that nets out contracting and expanding sectors—on short-run employment has been negligible.

The second problem that must be addressed when designing a liberalization strategy is the sequencing of reform (Edwards, 1984). This issue was first addressed in the 1980s in discussions dealing with the Southern Cone (Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay) experience and emphasized the macroeconomic consequences of alternative sequences. It is now generally agreed that resolving the fiscal imbalance and attaining some degree of macroeconomic reform should be a priority of structural reform. Most analysts also agree that trade liberalization should precede liberalization of the capital account and that financial reform should be implemented only after a modern and efficient supervisory framework is put in place.23

The behavior of the real exchange rate is at the heart of this policy prescription. The central issue is that liberalizing the capital account, under some conditions, results in large capital inflows and an appreciation of the real exchange rate (McKinnon, 1982; Edwards, 1984; Harberger, 1985).24 The problem with this scenario is that an appreciation of the real exchange rate will send the “wrong” signal to the real sector, frustrating the reallocation of resources called for by the trade reform. The effects of this real exchange rate appreciation will be particularly serious if, as argued by McKinnon (1982) and Edwards (1984), the transitional period is characterized by “abnormally” high capital inflows that result in temporary real appreciations. If, however, the opening of the capital account is postponed, the real sector will be able to adjust and the new allocation of resources will be consolidated. According to this view, only at this time should the capital account be liberalized.

More recent discussions on the sequencing of reform have expanded the analysis to include other markets. An increasing number of authors have argued that the reform of the labor market—in particular the removal of distortions that discourage labor mobility—should precede the trade reform as well as the relaxation of capital controls. As argued by Edwards (1992), it is even possible that the liberalization of trade in the presence of highly distorted labor markets will be counterproductive, generating overall welfare losses in the country in question. Discussions on the sequencing of reform have addressed in detail only the order in which the liberalization of various “real” sectors in society should proceed. For instance, only a few studies, such as those by Krueger (1981) and Edwards (1984), have dealt with the order of reform of agriculture, industry, government (i.e., privatization), financial services, and education. The key question is the extent to which independent reforms will bear all their potential fruits or whether the existence of synergism implies that in a broad liberalization process the reforms in different sectors reinforce each other.25

As the preceding discussion has suggested, real exchange rate behavior is a key element during the transition to trade liberalization. According to traditional manuals on how to liberalize, a large devaluation should constitute the first step of trade reform. Maintaining a depreciated and competitive real exchange rate during trade liberalization is also important in order to avoid an explosion in import growth and a balance of payments crisis. Under most circumstances, a reduction in protection will tend to generate a rapid and immediate surge in imports. On the other hand, the expansion of exports usually takes some time. Consequently, there is a danger that trade liberalization will generate a large trade balance disequilibrium in the short run. This, however, will not happen if there is a depreciated real exchange rate that encourages exports and curbs imports.

Many countries have historically failed to sustain a depreciated real exchange rate during the transition, mainly because of expansionary macroeconomic policies that generate speculation and international reserve losses and, in many cases, lead to a reversal of the reform effort. In the conclusions to the massive World Bank project on trade reform Michaely, Papageorgiou, and Choksi (1991) succinctly summarize the key role of the real exchange rate in determining the success of liberalization programs: “The long term performance of the real exchange rate clearly differentiates liberalizers’ from ‘non-liberalizers’” (p. 119). Edwards (1989) used data on 39 exchange rate crises and found that, in almost every case, real exchange rate overvaluation led to drastic increases in the degree of protectionism.

Order of Stabilization and Trade Liberalization Policies

The question of sequencing macroeconomic stabilization and structural reform—especially trade reform—has recently become an important policy issue in a number of places, including Latin America, Eastern Europe, and the countries of the former Soviet Union. Analysts have asked whether fiscal reform should precede structural reform or whether both types of policies should be implemented simultaneously. By the late 1980s, most analysts began to agree that in countries with serious macroeconomic imbalances the most appropriate sequencing required early and decisive action on the macroeconomic front, including the elimination of the debt-overhang problem.26 It was argued that the uncertainty associated with high inflation, including high relative price variability, would reduce the effectiveness of market-oriented structural reforms, especially trade liberalization policies. This high degree of uncertainty would result in low investment and, in some cases, could even direct investment toward the “wrong” sectors (Fischer, 1986).

A second argument for the “stabilization-first” sequence is based on the contribution of foreign trade taxes to public revenues: if public finances have not been brought under control, the reduction of import tariffs would make things worse by increasing the fiscal deficit. This argument is considered to be particularly valid for low-income countries that rely heavily on taxes on international trade.

As in the case of trade versus capital account liberalization, the real exchange rate is at the center of the debate. Under a set of plausible conditions, macroeconomic stabilization programs will tend to result in an appreciation of the real exchange rate, while, as pointed out above, a successful trade reform will require a real depreciation.

A limitation of the approach that advocates stabilization before liberalization is that it does not distinguish between different degrees of macroeconomic disequilibria at the time the reforms are initiated. While the relative price variability and real exchange appreciation arguments are eminently plausible for high-inflation countries, they are unlikely to be as important in countries that start from moderate inflation. For example, Krueger (1981) has argued that the Asian and Middle Eastern experiences suggest that there is little connection between the determinants of inflation and the orientation of the trade regime. Along similar lines, Edwards (1992) has argued that, in countries with moderate rates of inflation, trade liberalization and macroeconomic stabilization will tend to reinforce each other. In particular, the reduction of import tariffs and the exposure of the domestic industry to foreign competition will tend to introduce “price discipline.” Moreover, the increase in productivity growth usually associated with trade reforms will tend to offset mild real exchange rate appreciations that take place during the stabilization effort. A second limitation of this approach is that it tends to ignore the political economy of reform. Two points are in order regarding this issue. First, once embarked on a major transformation process, reform-minded policymakers tend to take advantage of whatever opportunity they have. Second, in many cases it is easier to attack the protectionist lobby—which is fairly well defined and concentrated in specific industries—than to deal with the interest groups that lead to fiscal imbalances and inflation.

In spite of these limitations, the stabilization-first approach has become the dominant view among policy analysts, including the staffs of multilateral financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. However, as documented in World Bank (1993b), almost every country in Latin America ignored this piece of advice and either embarked on trade reform first or implemented trade liberalization and stabilization policies simultaneously.

Determinants of Successful Trade Liberalization Policies

Two economic aspects of trade liberalization are particularly important for analyzing the political economy of transition and the likelihood that reforms can be sustained over time. First, it takes time for the structural reforms to bear fruit. This means that even though in the long run the reforms will have a positive effect on the aggregate economy, there will be some short-run costs. These transitional costs, however, will not be even and will affect some groups more heavily than others. Second, even in the long run some groups will lose and will see their real incomes diminish. These groups will be those that have benefited from the prereform maze of regulations, and, in most cases, they will tend to oppose the reforms from the beginning. Politically, then, trade reforms will survive only if they show some benefits early on and if these benefits expand gradually, affecting larger and larger segments of society.

The extensive comparative studies by Little, Scitovsky, and Scott (1970), Balassa (1971, 1982), Krueger (1978, 1980), Bhagwati (1978), and Michaely, Papageorgiou, and Choksi (1991) have provided abundant evidence on the key determinants of a successful trade reform that will change the trade structure of a country. These elements can serve as a guide for policymakers who want to implement trade liberalization policies that will be sustained over time. Existing historical evidence suggests that successful (i.e., sustained) reforms have been characterized, in the short and medium run, by at least some of the following elements: 27

  • Exports, particularly nontraditional exports, expand at a pace that exceeds the historical rate.

  • Productivity growth increases rapidly, helping generate rapid growth for the economy as a whole.

  • The trade balance does not exhibit “unreasonable” deficits. If such deficits exist, the public will be skeptical about the viability of the reform and will speculate against the domestic currency.

  • The overall level of unemployment stays at a relatively low level. • Real wages increase, at least in the medium run. For this increase in wages to affect a broad sector of society, trade liberalization should be supplemented by other structural reforms aimed at deregulating and liberalizing other sectors of the economy.

Recent Trade Liberalization Reforms in Latin America and the Caribbean

The pioneer in the Latin American trade liberalization process was Chile, which, between 1975 and 1979, unilaterally eliminated quantitative restrictions and reduced import tariffs to a uniform level of 10 percent. After a brief interlude with higher tariffs (at the uniform level of 35 percent), by 1992 Chile had reduced its degree of protection to a uniform tariff of 11 percent, totally abolishing licenses and other forms of quantitative controls. Uruguay implemented its reform in 1978 and, after a brief reversal, pushed forward once again in 1986. Bolivia and Mexico embarked on their reforms in 1985–86, followed by a number of countries in the late 1980s. By early 1992, a number of Latin American countries, including Brazil, were proceeding steadily with scheduled rounds of tariff reduction and the dismantling of quantitative restrictions. However, at the time of this writing, it is still unclear whether all these reforms will become a permanent feature of the Latin America economies or whether some of them will be reversed. Recent developments in Argentina and Colombia indeed suggest that in some countries higher tariffs may be implemented, once again, in the near future.

The Latin American trade reforms have been characterized by four basic components: (1) the reduction of the coverage of nontariff barriers, including quotas and prohibitions; (2) the reduction of the average level of import tariffs; (3) the reduction of the degree of dispersion of the tariff structure; and (4) the reduction of export taxes. These measures have generally been supported by exchange rate policies aimed at maintaining a competitive real exchange rate.

Nontariff Barriers

A key component of the trade reform programs has been the elimination, or at least the severe reduction, of the coverage of NTBs. During the early and mid-1980s in some countries, such as Colombia and Peru, more than 50 percent of import positions were subject to licenses or outright prohibitions. In Mexico, as in most of Central America, NTBs covered almost all import categories in 1985 (Table 7.1).

Table 7.2 contains data on protectionism in 1985–87 and 1991–92 and shows that in almost every country the coverage of NTBs has been substantially reduced.28 In fact, in a number of countries they have been fully eliminated. The process through which NTBs have been eased has varied from country to country. In some cases, such as Honduras, they were initially replaced by quasi-equivalent import tariffs and then slowly phased out. In other countries, like Chile, they were eliminated rapidly without a compensating hike in tariffs.

Table 7.2.

Selected Latin American Countries: Decline in Level of Protection

(In percent)

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Sources: World Bank; UNCTAD, Handbook of Trade Control Measures of Developing Countries; and Erzan and others (1989).

These figures are unweighted averages.

As Table 7.2 shows, in spite of the progress experienced in the past few years, significant NTB coverage remains in a number of countries. In most cases, these NTBs correspond to agricultural products. For example, in approximately 60 percent of Mexico’s agriculture sector, tariff positions were still subject to import licenses in mid-1992. Those for U.S. imports were scheduled to be eliminated as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement. An important feature of the region’s liberalization programs is that they have proceeded much slower in agriculture than in industry. This has largely been the result of the authorities’ desire to isolate agriculture from fluctuations in world prices and unfair trade practices by foreign countries.29 Although, according to a recent study by Valdés (1992), this approach based on quantitative restrictions entails serious efficiency costs, more and more countries are addressing these concerns by replacing quantitative restrictions with variable levies and by introducing a system for smoothing price fluctuations based on price bands.

Tariff Dispersion

The development strategy based on import substitution that Latin America pursued for decades created highly dispersed protective structures. According to the World Bank (1987), Brazil, Chile, and Colombia had some of the highest degrees of dispersion in effective protection in the world during the 1960s. Also, Heitger (1987) shows that during the 1960s Chile had the highest rate of tariff dispersion in the world—with a standard deviation of 634 percent—closely followed by Colombia and Uruguay. Cardoso and Helwege (1992) have pointed out that highly dispersed protective structures generate high welfare costs by increasing uncertainty and negatively affecting the investment process. These highly dispersed tariffs and NTBs were the result of decades of lobbying by different sectors to obtain preferential treatment. As the relative power of the different lobbies changed, so did their tariff concessions and the protective landscape.

An important goal of the Latin American trade reforms has been the reduction of the degree of dispersion of import tariffs. Table 7.3 contains data on the tariff range for a group of countries for 1985–87 and 1991–92 and clearly documents that the reforms have indeed reduced the range between minimum and maximum tariffs. In many cases this has meant increasing tariffs on goods that were originally exempted from import duties. In fact, this table shows that in many countries the minimum tariff was zero in the mid-1980s. Generally, zero tariffs have been applied to intermediate inputs used in the manufacturing process.30 From a political-economy perspective, the process of raising some tariffs while maintaining a pro-liberalization rhetoric has not always been easy. Those sectors that had traditionally benefited from the exemptions tried to oppose them strongly as they suddenly saw their privileged situation coming to an end.

Table 7.3.

Range of Import Tariffs

(In percent)

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Sources: World Bank; UNCTAD, Handbook of Trade Control Measures of Developing Countries; Erzan and others (1989).

An important question addressed by policymakers throughout the region is: By how much should tariff dispersion be reduced? Should a uniform tariff be implemented or is some dispersion desirable? Although from a strict welfare perspective, uniform tariffs are advisable only under special circumstances, they have a strong administrative and politicaleconomy appeal. In particular, a uniform tariff system is transparent, making it difficult for the authorities to grant special treatment to particular firms or sectors (Harberger, 1990).

Average Tariffs

Reducing the average degree of protection is, perhaps, the fundamental policy goal of trade liberalization reforms. Traditional policy manuals on the subject suggest that once the exchange rate has been devalued and quantitative restrictions have been reduced or eliminated, tariffs should be slashed in such a way that both their range and average are reduced.31 Table 7.2 contains data on average total tariffs (tariffs plus para-tariffs) in 1985 and 1991–92. As can be seen, the extent of tariff reduction has been significant in almost every country. Even countries that have acted somewhat cautiously on the reform front have experienced important cuts in import tariffs, making the environment more competitive and reducing the degree of antiexport bias of the trade regime.

Countries that have embarked on trade liberalization in recent years have moved much faster than those that decided to open up earlier. There has, in fact, been a clear change in what is perceived to be abrupt and rapid removal of impediments to imports. What only 15 years ago were seen as brutally fast reforms are now viewed as mild and gradual liberalizations. When Chile initiated its trade reform in 1975, most analysts thought that the announced tariff reduction from an average of 52 percent to 10 percent in four and a half years was an extremely aggressive move that would cause major dislocations, including large increases in unemployment. The view on the speed of reform has changed in the early 1990s, as an increasing number of countries have opened up their external sectors very rapidly. For instance, Colombia slashed total import tariffs by 65 percent in one year, reducing them from 34 percent in 1990 to 12 percent in 1991. This fast approach to liberalization has also been followed by Argentina, Nicaragua, and Peru. Nicaragua eliminated quantitative restrictions in one bold move and slashed import tariffs from an average of 110 percent in 1990 to 15 percent in March 1992.

Exchange Rate Policy

In the vast majority of countries, the first step in the recent trade reform process was the implementation of large nominal devaluations. In many cases, this measure represented a unification of the exchange rate market. Most countries implemented large exchange rate adjustments as early as 1982 in order to address the urgent needs of the adjustment process. The purpose of these policies was to generate real exchange rate devaluations as a way to reduce the degree of antiexport bias of incentive systems.

Many countries adopted crawling peg regimes, characterized by a periodic, small devaluation of the nominal exchange rate to protect the real exchange rate from the effects of inflation.32 Table 7.4 contains data on real exchange rates for a group of Latin American countries for 1980, 1987, and 1992. Once again, an increase in the index represents a real exchange rate depreciation and thus an improvement in the degree of competitiveness. Between 1980 and 1987, almost every country in the sample experienced large real depreciations (see World Bank, 1993b), although in many countries they have been partially reversed in the past few years. The reversals have been the consequence of a combination of events, including the inflow of large volumes of foreign capital into these countries since 1990 and the use of the exchange rate as the cornerstone of the disinflation policies. This subject is addressed below. Overall, however, in most countries the real exchange rate was depreciated significantly more by late 1991 than it was in 1981. This greatly encouraged exports, helping revert decades of discriminatory policies.

Table 7.4.

Real Exchange Rates in Selected Latin American Countries

(1985 = 100)

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Source: Calculated using data from IMF, International Financial Statistics database.

Preliminary.

Note: Increases indicate currency depreciation against the dollar.

Effects of Trade Liberalization

The trade liberalization reforms implemented in Latin America had three fundamental objectives: (1) to reduce the antiexport bias of the old regime and, thus, to encourage exports; (2) to help create an increase in total factor productivity growth through greater competition and enhanced efficiency; and (3) to increase consumer welfare by reducing the real prices of importable goods. In this section, the evolution of productivity and exports in the postreform period are analyzed in some detail.

Trade Liberalization and Productivity Growth

The relaxation of trade impediments has had a fundamental impact on the region’s economies. Suddenly, Latin America’s industry, which to a large extent had developed and grown behind protective walls, was forced to compete. Many firms have not been able to survive this shock and have become bankrupt. Others, however, have met the challenge of lower protection by embarking on major restructuring and have increased their level of productivity.

The ability, and willingness, of firms to implement significant adjustment depends on the degree of credibility of the reform and the level of distortions in the labor market. If entrepreneurs believe that the reform will not endure over time, they will have no incentives to incur the costs of adjusting the product mix and increasing the degree of productive efficiency. In fact, if the reform is perceived as temporary, the optimal behavior is not to adjust but to speculate through the accumulation of imported durable goods. This approach, as Rodríguez (1982) has documented, was adopted in Argentina during the failed Martinez de Hoz reforms.33

In their studies on the interaction between labor markets and structural reforms, Krueger (1980) and Michaely, Papageorgiou, and Choksi (1991) found that most successful trade reforms have indeed resulted in major increases in labor productivity. In most countries in which this has happened, labor markets have been characterized by some degree of flexibility. Countries with rigid and highly distorted labor markets—including countries with high costs of dismissal, limitations on temporary contracts, and rigid minimum wage legislation—have generally exhibited modest improvements in labor productivity since the reform.

Some of the early Latin American reformers have experienced important labor productivity improvements. For example, according to Edwards and Edwards (1991), labor productivity in the Chilean manufacturing sector increased at an average annual rate of 13.4 percent between 1978 and 1981. The available evidence also suggests that the increases in labor productivity in the Mexican manufacturing sector in the postreform period have been significant. According to Sánchez (1992), labor productivity in Mexico’s manufacturing sector increased at an annual rate of almost 4 percent between 1986 and 1991. This figure is more than double the historical annual rate of growth of labor productivity of 1.6 percent in the manufacturing sector between 1960 and 1982 (Elias, 1992).

As discussed above, recent models of growth have suggested that countries that are more open to the rest of the world will exhibit a faster rate of technological improvement and productivity growth than countries that isolate themselves from the rest of the world. From an empirical point of view, countries that open up their external sectors and engage in trade liberalization reforms will experience an increase in total factor productivity (TFP) growth relative to the prereform period. The empirical regression analysis presented in the appendix to this chapter supports the idea that, when other variables (such as human capital formation, government size, political volatility, and the development gap) are held constant, the degree of openness of the economy is positively associated with the rate of growth of productivity. What is particularly important is that this result appears to be robust to the proxy used to measure trade policy orientation.

Table 7.4 contains data on the change in aggregate TFP growth in the period following the implementation of trade liberalization reform in six Latin American countries.34 Although these data cannot be interpreted as capturing causality, they are still suggestive. As can be seen, Chile and Costa Rica, two of the earliest reformers, experienced very large increases in the growth of TFP in the postreform period. The results for Chile coincide with those obtained by Edwards (1985), who found that in the late 1970s after the trade reforms had been completed, TFP growth was approximately three times higher than the historical average.35 Although the outcome has been less spectacular in Argentina and Uruguay, these countries still exhibit important improvements in productivity growth following the opening up. Bolivia, on the other hand, presents a flat profile of productivity growth. Sturzenegger (1992) argues that the very slow improvement in Bolivian productivity growth has been, to a large extent, the result of negative terms of trade shocks and, in particular, the collapse of the tin market.36

Perhaps the most puzzling result in Table 7.5 is the slight decline in aggregate productivity growth in Mexico after the reforms. Martin (1992) shows that this finding is robust to alternative methods of measuring TFP growth, including different procedures for correcting for capacity utilization. Also, Harberger (1990) has found a slowing down of productivity growth in Mexico in 1986–90 relative to 1975–82.37 However, the aggregate nature of the data in Table 7.5 tends to obscure the actual sectoral response to trade reform in Mexico. According to new theories on endogenous growth, faster productivity will be observed in those sectors where protectionism has been reduced and not in those that are still subject to trade barriers or other forms of regulation.

Table 7.5.

Changes in Total Factor Productivity Growth

(In percent)

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Source: Martin (1992).

Prereform period is 1972–78.

A distinctive characteristic of the Mexican reform is that, contrary to the Chilean reform, it proceeded at an uneven pace. In particular, while most of the manufacturing sector—with the exception of automobiles—experienced a significant reduction in protection in the early stages, agriculture continues to be subject to relatively high tariffs and substantial nontariff barriers. Moreover, until very recently, the Mexican land tenure system was subject to a legal system—the ejido—that, among other things, severely restricted the market for land and distorted economic incentives in many other directions. Although most agricultural sector regulations were legally eliminated in early 1992, these reforms have not yet had a practical impact because the titling process, where property rights are actually assigned, is still in its infancy. By mid-1993 practically no ejidos had yet been converted into private landholdings.38 Also, during much of the period following the debt crisis, large fragments of the services sector in Mexico—including telecommunications and financial services—were under direct government control and subject to distortions.

Table 7.6 contains data on productivity growth in Mexico’s manufacturing sector for 1940–89.39 These figures indicate that since the trade reform period was implemented, the rate of productivity growth in the Mexican manufacturing sector has exceeded every subperiod since 1940 for which there are data. This evidence favors the view that, once the sectors actually subjected to increased competition are considered, Mexican productivity growth has indeed improved since the trade reform. This proposition is supported by results recently obtained by Weiss (1992), who used regression analysis to investigate the impact of the trade reforms on productivity and cost margins.

Table 7.6.

Mexico: Total Factor Productivity Growth in Manufacturing, 1940–90

(In percent)

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Sources: Dat a for 1940–80 are from Elias (1992); for 1985–89, from Ibarra (1992).

An important question that arises when the effects of trade reform are evaluated has to do with the speed with which productivity growth will react to the new incentives. Will the response be rapid, or will it be necessary to wait for a long time before the reforms yield results? Existing data for Chile provide some support for the idea that total factor productivity growth will react quite fast. For example, Edwards (1985) found that already by 1979—the year the trade reform reached its goal of a uniform 10 percent import tariff—aggregate total factor productivity growth in Chile had reached 5.4 percent, significantly higher than the historical level. More recently, Agacino, Rivas, and Román (1992) found that total factor productivity growth averaged 3.9 percent a year during 1976–81, greatly exceeding the historical average of approximately 1 percent. These author salso found significant variations across industries during 1976–81. In some industries, for example, wood products and glass industries, average productivity growth exceeded 10 percent a year, while in others, for example, nonelectric machinery, it was negative.

Trade Reforms and Exports

An important goal of trade reform has been to reduce the traditional degree of antiexport bias of Latin American trade regimes and to generate a surge in exports. In fact, based on the East Asian model, Latin American leaders have increasingly called for the transformation of the external sector into the region’s engine of growth. As pointed out previously, it is expected that the reduction of this traditional antiexport bias will take place through three channels: a more competitive—that is, more devalued—real exchange rate; a reduction in the cost of imported capital goods and intermediate inputs used in the production of exportables; and a direct shift in relative prices in favor of exports.

The volume of international trade in Latin America, and, in particular, that of exports, increased significantly after the reforms were initiated (see, for example, Nogués and Gulati, 1992). Although the volume of exports for the region as a whole grew at an annual rate of only 2 percent between 1970 and 1980, it grew at a rate of 5.5 percent between 1980 and 1985 and at an annual average of 6.7 percent between 1986 and 1990. The real value of exports, however, has evolved at a somewhat slower pace because the terms of trade in every subgroup of countries underwent a significant deterioration during 1980–93 (see United Nations, 1992). Although, strictly speaking, it is not possible to attribute this export surge fully to the reforms, there is significant country-specific evidence suggesting that a more open economy and, in particular, a more depreciated real exchange rate, has positively affected export growth.40 Some countries, notably Costa Rica, also implemented a battery of export-promotion schemes, including tax credits—through the Certificado de Abono Tributario— duty-free imports, and income tax exemptions. However, some authors, including Nogues and Gulati (1992), have argued that these systems have been fiscally expensive and have not been an effective way of encouraging exports.41

Table 7.7 presents detailed country-level data on the rate of growth of the total value of exports (in constant dollars) for three different periods.Table 7.8 contains information on the evolution of export volume for 1970–93. A number of facts emerge from these tables. First, while exports have grown rapidly for the region as a whole, there are nontrivial variations across countries; some countries have experienced a decline in the real value of exports—for example, Peru. Second, export performance during the subperiods 1982–87 and 1987–92 has not been homogeneous. In the majority of the countries, exports performed significantly better during 1987–92 than in the previous five years, reflecting, among other things, the fact that it takes some time for exports to respond to greater incentives.

Table 7.7.

Selected Latin American Countries: Value of Exports of Goods and Nonfactor Services

(Annual percentage growth rates in constant prices)

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Source: World Bank, International Economics Department database.

Preliminary.

1974–80.

An interesting fact that emerges from these tables is that in the country that has lagged behind in terms of trade reform—Ecuador—the performance of export volume has been, in recent years, below the 1970–80 historical average. In contrast, in two of the early reformers—Bolivia and Chile—exports were very strong during 1987–90.

The Chilean case is particularly interesting. Since most of its liberalization effort was undertaken prior to 1980, there are enough data points to provide a more detailed evaluation of the export response to the new regime. Between 1975 and 1980—when tariffs were reduced to a uniform 10 percent and nontariff barriers were completely eliminated—the performance of Chilean exports was spectacular, growing (in volume terms) at an average of 12 percent a year—many times higher than the historical average of 1960–70 of only 2.6 percent a year. What is particularly impressive is that most of the export surge took place in the nontraditional sector (United Nations, 1991).

The story of Chile’s success in the past few years is closely related to a boom in agriculture, forestry, and fishing exports. During 1960–70, Chile was basically a net importer of agricultural goods, whereas today, agricultural, forestry, and fishing exports play an increasingly important role in the Chilean economy. In 1970, Chile exported US$33 million in agricultural, forestry, and fishing products; by 1991 this figure had jumped to US$1.2 billion. This figure excludes the manufactured goods that are based on the elaboration of the agriculture sector. There is little doubt that economic policy lies behind the stellar performance of the Chilean agriculture and export sectors in the past years. First, the liberalization of international trade substantially lowered the costs of agricultural imported inputs and capital goods, making the sector more competitive. In fact, the liberalization of international trade put an end to a long trend of discrimination against agriculture. In contrast, Mexican agriculture has not yet benefited from the very recent liberalization measures. For example, the reform of the old ejido system has not yet occurred. Second, the exchange rate policy pursued aggressively in Chile since 1985 has provided clear incentives for the expansion of exports. However, as is discussed in some detail in the section on real exchange rate behavior and capital flows, the current trend toward real exchange rate appreciation represents a cloud in the future of the sector. A third, fundamental policy-based explanation of the success of the Chilean agriculture has to do with the pursuit of a stable macroeconomic policy. This has allowed entrepreneurs to have confidence in the system and to plan their activities over the longer run. Many of the export-oriented agricultural activities have required sizable investments that are undertaken only in an environment of stability and policy continuity. Fourth, the strict respect for property rights, and the emergence of a stable and legal framework, also had significant, positive effects on the evolution of Chilean agricultural exports.

As Tables 7.7 and 7.8 show, Mexico has exhibited a slower rate of growth of total exports in the postreform period than during 1970–80. This, however, is largely an illusion stemming from the fact that during the 1970s Mexico’s oil production increased rapidly—at a rate exceeding 18 percent a year. When nontraditional exports are considered, the post-reform performance is remarkable, with an annual average rate of growth for 1985–91 of more than 25 percent (see Table 7.9).42

Table 7.8.

Selected Latin American Countries: Volume of Exports of Goods

(Annual percentage growth rates)

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Source: United Nations, Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, Statistical Yearbook for Latin America, various issues.

Preliminary.

Table 7.9.

Share of Nontraditional Exports

(In percent of total exports)

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Source: United Nations, Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, Economic Survey of Latin America, various issues.

Industrial products.

1989 data; subsequent data are classified differently.

1990 data.

Manufactured products.

After two successive years of decline, the volume of exports in Brazil increased rapidly during 1992, to 4.9 percent. In 1993, Brazilian exports expanded by almost 12 percent in volume terms. Although it is too early to determine what forces are behind this rapid growth, and whether it will be sustained, there is some indication that the highly depreciated real exchange rate and the reduction in the degree of protection in the country have helped increase the degree of international competitiveness of Brazil’s exports.43 This interpretation is supported by recent empirical results by Bonelli (1992), who found that productivity growth in Brazil’s manufacturing sector has been positively affected by export orientation.

A stated objective of trade reforms has been to increase the degree of diversification of exports. Table 7.10 contains data for 12 Latin American countries on the share of manufacturing exports and shows that following the trade reforms their importance has increased steadily in the early reformers—Bolivia, Chile, and Mexico. Also, in the majority of the countries, the share of the ten most important export goods in total exports has declined significantly in the last few years (United Nations, 1991).

Table 7.10.

Exports of Manufactured Goods

(In percent of total)

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Source: United Nations, Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, Statistical Yearbook for Latin America, various issues.

1990 data.

A somewhat troublesome recent development is that during 1993 the rate of export growth (measured in constant value) has slowed down significantly in many Latin American countries. The slowdown is the result of a number of factors, including the sluggishness of the world economy, the slowing down of productivity gains, and, especially, the recent trends toward real exchange rate appreciation observed in most countries in the region.

Real Exchange Rate Behavior, Capital Inflows, and the Future of Trade Reforms

In the past few years, competitive real exchange rates have been at the center of the vigorous performance of most of Latin America’s external sectors. In fact, trade reforms have been driven by highly competitive real exchange rates, making Latin American products very attractive in world markets. However, as pointed out previously, in most Latin American countries real exchange rates have recently experienced significant real appreciations and losses in competitiveness. Chart 7.1 presents the evolution of real exchange rates for selected countries.

Chart 7.1.
Chart 7.1.

Real Effective Exchange Rates in Selected Latin American Countries

(1985= 100)

Note: An increase in the index denotes a real depreciation.Source: IMF, International Financial Statistics, various editions.

These real appreciations and losses in international competitiveness, which have generated considerable concern among policymakers and political leaders (see Calvo, Leiderman, and Reinhart, 1992), result from two developments: first, a large number of countries are using exchange rate policy as an anti-inflationary tool, and, second, recent massive capital inflows into Latin America have made foreign exchange “overabundant.”

Tables 7.11 and 7.12 contain data on capital inflows into Latin America and show that, after eight years of negative resource transfers, there was a significant turnaround in 1991–92. The increased availability of foreign funds has affected the real exchange rate through increased aggregate expenditure. A proportion of the newly available resources has been spent on nontradables—including the real estate sector—putting pressure on their relative prices and on domestic inflation. An interesting feature of the recent capital movements is that a large proportion corresponds to portfolio investment and relatively little is foreign direct investment. As can be seen, Mexico has been the most important recipient of foreign funds in the region in the past few years. Indeed, this large availability of foreign financing has allowed that country to have a current account deficit of 5–6 percent of GDP. An important question is whether these inflows are sustainable, or whether a decline in the level of funds available is foreseen in the near future.

Table 7.11.

Latin America: Capital Inflows and Net Resource Transfers

(In billions of U.S. dollars)

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Source: Jaspersen (1992).
Table 7.12.

Selected Latin American Countries: Net Capital Inflows

(In percent of GDP)

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Sources: World Bank, International Economics Department database (GDP); and IMF, Balance of Payments Statistics database (capital Inflows).

Preliminary.

Real exchange rate appreciations generated by increased capital inflows are not a completely new phenomenon in Latin America. In the late 1970s, most countries in the region, but especially those in the Southern Cone, were flooded with foreign resources that led to large real appreciations. The fact that this previous episode ended in the debt crisis has added drama to the current concern about the possible negative effects of these capital flows.

Whether these capital movements are temporary—and thus subject to sudden reversals, as in 1982—is particularly important in evaluating their possible consequences. In a recent study, Calvo, Leiderman, and Reinhart (1992) argued that the most important causes of the generalized inflow of resources are external. In particular, their empirical analysis suggests that these capital movements were triggered primarily by the recession in the industrial world and the reduction in U.S. interest rates. These authors suggest that once these world economic conditions change, the volume of capital flowing to Latin America will decline. At that point, the pressure on the real exchange rate will subside, and a real exchange rate depreciation will be required.

The countries in the region have tried to cope with the real appreciation pressures in several ways. Colombia, for instance, tried to sterilize the accumulation of reserves by placing domestic bonds on the local market in 1991.44 However, to place these bonds, the authorities had to increase the local interest rate to make them more attractive. This move generated a widening interest rate differential in favor of Colombia, which attracted new capital flows that, in order to be sterilized, required new bond placements. This process created a vicious cycle that contributed to a large accumulation of domestic debt without significantly affecting the real exchange rate. This experience shows vividly the difficulties faced by authorities wishing to handle real exchange rate movements. In particular, this case indicates that real shocks—such as an increase in foreign capital inflows—cannot be tackled successfully using monetary policy instruments.

During 1993, Argentina tried to deal with the real appreciation by engineering a pseudo devaluation through a simultaneous increase in import tariffs and export subsidies. Although it is too early to know how this measure will affect the country’s competitiveness, preliminary computations suggest that the magnitude of the adjustment obtained through a tariffs-cum-subsidies package may be rather small. Mexico followed a different route, deciding to postpone the adoption of a completely fixed exchange rate. In October 1992, the pace of the daily nominal exchange rate adjustment was doubled to 40 cents. As the unfolding of the Mexican peso crisis of December 1994 showed, this measure was clearly not enough. At this point, however, it is difficult to know how the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) will affect Mexico’s equilibrium real exchange rate and its competitiveness.

Chile has tackled the real appreciation by implementing a broad set of measures, including conducting exchange rate policy relative to a three-currency basket, imposing reserve requirements on capital inflows, allowing the nominal exchange rate to appreciate somewhat, and undertaking significant sterilization operations. In spite of this multifront approach, Chile has not avoided real exchange rate pressures. Between December 1991 and December 1992, the Chilean bilateral real exchange rate appreciated by approximately 10 percent. As a result, exporters and agriculture producers have been mounting increasing pressure on the government for special treatment, arguing that it had broken an implicit contract by allowing the real exchange rate to appreciate. This type of political reaction is becoming more and more generalized throughout the region and has been particularly important in Colombia, adding a difficult social dimension to the real exchange rate issue.

Although there is no easy way to handle the real appreciation pressures, experience shows that the authorities have at least two options. First, in those countries where the dominant force behind real exchange rate movements is price inertia in the presence of nominal exchange rate anchor policies, the adoption of a pragmatic crawling peg system will usually help. This means that, to some extent, the inflationary targets will have to be less ambitious because a periodic exchange rate adjustment will result in some inflation.45 However, to the extent that this policy is supplemented by tight overall fiscal policy there should be no concern regarding inflationary explosions.

Second, the discrimination between short-term, speculative capital and longer-term capital should go a long way toward alleviating the preoccupations about the effects of capital movements on real exchange rates. To the extent that short-term capital flows are more volatile and capital inflows are genuinely long term—especially if they help finance investment projects in the tradables sector—the change in the real exchange rate will be a “true equilibrium” phenomenon. Policymakers should recognize them as such by implementing the required adjustment resource allocation. In practice, however, discriminating between “permanent” and “transitory” capital inflows is difficult; ultimately, policymakers are forced to make a judgment call.

Regional Trading Blocks, Multilateralism, and Industrial Country Protectionism

As the twenty-first century approaches, the world economy is moving toward the formation of a small number of trading blocs. Although the European Economic Community and NAFTA are considered the most formidable ones, a number of other trading blocs, with different degrees of cohesion, are rapidly emerging. Among these, the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), with its dynamic and aggressive members, is especially promising. This is particularly so if the formation of a yen zone in the Pacific—comprising Japan and the ASEAN countries—takes shape in the next few years.46

In the last few years, however, some new important trading blocs in the Western Hemisphere have emerged and are now attracting increasing attention from policy analysts. Among these, the Southern Cone Common Market (Mercosur) and the Andean Pact, which jointly comprise nine Latin American countries, are two of the most important ones and have a volume of international trade that is expected to approach US$250 billion a year by the year 2000.47 What makes this new integrationist effort in Latin America particularly interesting is that it is taking place within a context that strongly favors export promotion and the expansion of international trade throughout most of the developing world.

In addition to the somewhat large, multimember trade agreements, there has recently been a proliferation of bilateral integration agreements. Table 7.13 presents a brief summary of trade agreements negotiated since 1990. The majority of the Latin American countries have expressed keen interest in joining NAFTA and see the bilateral—or, for that matter, small multilateral—agreements as an intermediate step. Table 7.14 contains data on the evolution of intraregional trade, and Table 7.15 on bilateral trade for selected countries. Several important facts emerge from these tables. First, after having reached a low in 1985, intraregional trade has expanded greatly in the past few years. Contrary to popular belief, intaregional trade as a proportion of total trade is still significantly below its 1975–80 level. This means that there is significant room for further expanding intraregional trade. In this context, it is notable that intraregional trade in East Asia accounts for almost 30 percent of total trade. In a recent study, Losada (1993) found that, with reduced trade impediments, distance is the main determinant of bilateral trade.

Table 7.13.

Regional Integration Agreements in the Americas After 1990

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Sources: Lustig (1994); and World Bank.
Table 7.14.

Intraregional Trade in Latin America and the Caribbean

(Intraregional exports as percent of total exports)

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Source: IMF, Direction of Trade Statistics.
Table 7.15.

Intraregional Exports

(f.o.b. values; percent of total)

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Source: IMF, Direction of Trade Statistics.

Data through October 1993 except for exports from Argentina to Brazil, which correspond to May 1993.

Mercosur

Mercosur is a trade agreement signed by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay in 1991.48 Its main goal is to eliminate all tariffs for intraregional trade by December 1994 and to establish a common external tariff that would guide international trade between the member countries and the rest of the world. What is particularly interesting about MERCOSUR is that it groups the two largest countries in South America—Argentina and Brazil—with two of the smallest.49 Table 7.16 contains data on some basic indicators for these countries, as well as for Andean Pact members (see below). These data highlight some of the differences across the countries, including size, recent performance, and extent of international indebtedness. There is little doubt that the future of MERCOSUR will depend on the policies of Argentina and Brazil; Uruguay and Paraguay, as smaller members, will play a limited role in the political-diplomatic process that will determine the actual characteristics of the agreement.

Table 7.16.

Economic Indicators for Mercosur and Andean Pact Countries

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Sources: World Bank, World Development Indicators (1993); International Economics Department databases; and country department staff estimates.

Calculated according to the World bank Atlas method.

1991 data.

Exports of goods and nonfactor services, in constant prices.

Growth in GDP deflator, compound rate.

Note: All 1992 data are preliminary estimates.

Table 7.16, however, does not capture some important recent economic developments that are likely to affect the future of this agreement. Although Argentina has recently been able to make substantial progress in attaining macroeconomic stability and in launching an ambitious privatization program, Brazil has faced economic and political problems. The resignation in 1992 of President Fernando Collor de Mello added further uncertainty to the future of Brazil’s reform programs. Brazil’s inability to control inflation is particularly serious. In fact, there is widespread agreement that many of the troubles encountered by early integrationist attempts in Latin America during the 1960s and 1970s had their roots in the marked differences in countries’ macroeconomic performance, including inflation and exchange rate policies.50

The differences in strategy regarding the speed and depth of privatization and trade reform suggest that disagreements could easily erupt between Argentina and Brazil on points closely related to MERCOSUR. In particular, an increasingly large number of observers in Argentina are concerned that Brazil will insist on a higher common external tariff (CET) than what would be acceptable to Argentina. The current structure of protection in the individual members of MERCOSUR, discussed above, shows that there may indeed be some room for disagreement. Whereas Argentina has recently embraced a significant free trade stance—slashing tariffs, reducing nontariff barriers considerably, and completely eliminating export taxes-Brazil is aiming at a higher and more variable tariff structure.

Table 7.17 contains data on the recent level of intraregional trade for MERCOSUR members. It shows that intraregional trade is more important for Argentina (with 17 percent) than for Brazil (11 percent).51 This suggests that it is, in fact, Argentina that is bound to lose more if MERCOSUR is aborted. From a political-economy perspective, it is likely that in negotiations regarding policies toward third parties, Brazil may have an important edge. If it does, and if MERCOSUR is implemented around high import tariffs—with a range of 0–40 percent, which corresponds to the Brazilian liberalization target—it is unlikely that its members would experience a net gain over the long run. More specifically, if Argentina joins a trade agreement with a common external tariff set at the Brazilian level, the likely result will be trade diversion, which would more than offset any benefits derived from trade creation.52

Table 7.17.

Trade Among Mercosur Countries, 1992

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Source: IMF, Direction of Trade Statistics.

Table 7.18 presents the expected path of elimination of tariffs for intraregional trade within MERCOSUR. Two main differences with respect to previous attempts at integration immediately stand out.53 First, there is a high degree of automaticity in the integration process within MERCOSUR, and second, the total time frame allowed for integration is significantly shorter than those attempted previously (Edwards and Savastano, 1988). These features of the Asunción Treaty clearly indicate that, even in an agreement dominated by a not fully enthusiastic reformer such as Brazil, the rules governing opening up are quite aggressive and dynamic. An important, and as yet unresolved question, however, is whether this ambitious automatic intraregional liberalization program can be sustained in the presence of major macroeconomic imbalances in Brazil.

Table 7.18.

Imports Subject to Free Trade in Mercosur

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Source: Treaty of Asunción (1991).

Revival of the Andean Pact

In November 1990, more than two decades after its initial launching, the Andean Pact was renewed by the presidents of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela.54 The new agreement, which came to be known as the Act of La Paz, established a number of ambitious targets, including55 (1) the implementation of a free trade zone in the region by 1992; (2) an agreement on the level and structure of the CET by December 1991; (3) the implementation of the CET by December 1995; (4) the liberalization of maritime and air transportation; and (5) the facilitation of foreign investment and capital mobility within the Andean Group.

It is important to notice that there is great heterogeneity among the countries in the pact (see Table 7.16), with respect to the economic structure and to macroeconomic policy. For instance, while Bolivia and Peru are moving steadily toward low inflation and price stability, Venezuela continues to struggle in the area of macroeconomic management. Despite large increases during 1992 and 1993, the volume of intraregional trade remains somewhat limited (see Table 7.19) because factor endowments are rather similar across these countries and because there have been significant impediments to intraregional trade. These have been related both to administrative and commercial regulations and to an extremely poor land transportation system within the countries in the region. The low level of current intraregional trade suggests, in fact, that there is a possibility of significant trade diversion once the customs union is launched. Whether the union actually happens will depend largely on the level and structure of the common external tariff. The tariff, in fact, has become highly controversial and is currently threatening the future of the pact.

Table 7.19.

Trade Among Andean Pact Countries, 1992

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Source: IMF, Direction of Trade Statistics.

As the above discussion on the extent of the reforms showed, the Andean Pact nations have a significantly more homogeneous structure of protection than the MERCOSUR countries (Table 7.2). Nonetheless, there are still some important differences regarding the objectives of overall trade policy. Bolivia and Peru pursued aggressive free trade reforms, whereas Colombia and Venezuela, arguing that higher tariffs are still necessary to encourage the formation of a strong industrial base, have maintained a more protectionist stance. More recently, however, the Colombian government has been more inclined to accelerate the opening of its economy and its integration into the global economy. The differences on commercial policies have already generated serious friction among the signatories of the Act of La Paz, with Peru’s authorities threatening to abandon the pact altogether if the common external tariff is set at a rate considered to be excessively protectionist.56

In December 1991, in accordance with the Act of La Paz, a new agreement was signed by the Andean Group’s political authorities. The Act of Barahona established free trade zones between Bolivia, Colombia, and Venezuela, starting on January 1, 1992. Ecuador and Peru were expected to join the free trade zone in July 1992. With respect to the common external tariff, the Act of Barahona established an extremely cumbersome mechanism, with exceptions across both countries and goods. According to this act, the CET would have four levels (0, 5, 10, and 15 percent), except for Bolivia, which would only have levels of 5 percent and 10 percent. There were also exceptions for agricultural goods, automobiles, and noncompeting regional products, for which the tariff levels are still to be determined. From the beginning, this agreement on CET suffered serious shortcomings, including that the rules of origin were not determined. For all practical purposes, it is possible that the lowest tariffs (those of Bolivia) will become the effective CET for the region as a whole.

In May 1992, only a few months after the CET agreement, the future of the Andean Pact suffered a blow, when Peru unilaterally decided to suspend the preferential treatment granted to imports from member countries. This action was part of a general Peruvian policy aimed at forcing on the pact a lower CET. The governments of Colombia and Venezuela consequently decided to suspend negotiations with Peru on the common external tariff. It is too early to say whether the Andean integrationist movement will continue to move forward or whether it will die a second death. Although negotiations at the diplomatic level are still under way, the individual pact members have proceeded with their respective policies.

Revitalization of the Central American Common Market

During the early and mid-1980s, the Central American Common Market (CACM) began to break down, largely as a result of the international debt crisis. Most countries in the area responded to the debt crisis by imposing massive nontariff barriers, including multiple exchange rates. The most important consequence of this increase in protectionism was that the CACM common external tariff soon ceased to be relevant because the different members had different implicit tariffs for imports coming from outside the region. In 1986, the CACM received a fatal blow when the Central American payments clearing mechanism collapsed.57

In July 1991, after several years of independently undertaking trade adjustment, the presidents of the Central American nations decided to revitalize the CACM.58 Three important features of the renewed CACM are worth noting: first, the agreed-upon common external tariff contemplates a range of between 5 percent and 20 percent. This is significantly lower than the tariff structure most Central American countries have had until recently and represents a clear move toward trade liberalization (see Table 7.20). Second, the newly revitalized CACM includes two new countries: Panama, which never joined the original agreement, and Honduras, which had withdrawn in 1969. Third, in recent years the members of the CACM have actively used export-promotion schemes as a way to diversify and increase exports (see, for example, Saborio and Michalopoulos, 1992). Although it is still too early to know how successful these schemes have been, recent evidence presented by Saborio and Michalopoulos suggests that they have been costly from a fiscal perspective, without having had a significant impact on export expansion over and above what has been obtained through more competitive real exchange rates.

Table 7.20.

Tariff Structures in the Central American Common Market

(In percent)

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Source: Saborio and Michalopoulos (1992).

Ad valorem equivalent of average external tariff.

The renewed CACM is a far cry from the agreement originally enacted in the 1960s. Instead of promoting an inefficient and forced industrialization process behind protective walls, the countries in the region are now joining forces to compete internationally and to expand exports more rapidly.

North American Free Trade Agreement

As in most of Latin America, Mexico’s trade policy was characterized for decades by significant protectionism and inward orientation. As discussed above, in late 1985 Mexico embarked on an ambitious unilateral trade liberalization program as a component of a major structural adjustment plan. Import tariffs were halved, and import licenses were reduced to 20 percent from 92 percent.

After almost a decade of intensive, and often confrontational, trade negotiations, the United States and Mexico agreed in November 1990 to move toward a free trade agreement. In February 1991, Canada, Mexico, and the United States decided to start negotiating NAFTA, and later that year the U.S. Congress approved the “fast track” treatment of the agreement. On August 12, 1992, the three parties announced that they had come to an understanding on the exact nature of the proposed agreement.

Both the U.S. and Mexican negotiators originally expected the U.S. government to submit the agreement to Congress in the summer of 1992. However, U.S. presidential politics, plus deep dissension about certain details of the agreement, delayed its submission until late 1993. The most important areas of contention between U.S. and Mexican negotiators were (1) defining rules of origin for specific products, including automobiles; (2) establishing the rules for agricultural trade; (3) determining the treatment that would be given to automobiles; (4) workers’ protection in Mexico; and (5) environmental rules in Mexico, especially on the border. Of these, perhaps the most important problem was defining rules of origin. After a grueling debate, and the hasty implementation of a number of side agreements, the U.S. Congress finally passed NAFTA in November 1993. The agreement establishes different speeds of liberalization for different sectors. For example, according to the final text, in order for motor vehicles to be subject to free trade within NAFTA, their regional value added should initially be at least 50 percent. This figure, however, will increase slowly over eight years until it reaches 62.5 percent. Regarding the agriculture sector, the agreement proposes that tariffs be eliminated over a 15-year period for most items.

A number of authors have argued that NAFTA will have a severe, negative effect on Mexico’s agricultural sector (Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México/McGraw-Hill, 1994). In fact, the January 1993 uprising in Chiapas was, at least in part, the result of the perception that NAFTA would wipe out traditional agriculture in that state. A recent study by Vélez and Rubio (1994) indicates that production of most grains in Mexico—sorghum, wheat, barley, soybeans, beans, and maize—will suffer considerably from the implementation of the free trade agreement. Grain production in Mexico is highly inefficient and subject to a significant degree of protection. To avoid the devastating impact of free trade on Mexican agriculture, NAFTA considered the implementation of high initial tariffs, at a level that would replicate the protection granted by traditional licenses. These tariffs would be phased out gradually. For instance, the agreement established an initial import tariff on barley of 128 percent, which would be eliminated over ten years. Maize is perhaps the most dramatic example of inefficient production. Mexico’s average yields are approximately 1.7 tons a hectare, barely one-fourth of average U.S. yields. NAFTA established a tariff quota for maize imports into Mexico. Initially, it will be possible to import 2.5 million tons free of duty. During the first year of NAFTA, imports above that level will be subject to a tariff of 215 percent, which would be completely liberalized in 15 years.

As Nogués and Quintanilla (1992) have argued, the heavy media coverage received by NAFTA negotiations has tended to overshadow the broader commitment made by the Mexican government toward freer trade. In fact, after becoming a member of GATT in 1986, Mexico has consistently and systematically pursued freer trade policies, as manifested in the reduction of trade impediments, the signing of bilateral trade agreements with Chile (1991), and the current discussions to sign free trade agreements with Venezuela (1993), Colombia, and Central America. The recent negotiations to become a member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development also underlie the Mexican government vision of the importance of freer trade as a fundamental component of the national development strategy for the next several decades. However, for this policy position to be translated into additional gains in productivity and welfare, it will be necessary to further reduce tariffs and license coverage, and, as discussed in the preceding sections, to effectively broaden the reforms to all areas of the economy, especially agriculture. Although Mexico has come a long way, it still has a long way to go to achieve a protective structure similar to that of its most important trade partners, including the United States and Canada.

GATT and the Prospects for Global Trade Liberalization

There is little doubt that Latin America has embarked on one of the most substantial unilateral trade liberalization reforms in modern economic history. However, a serious concern among the region’s political leaders has been the industrial countries’ lack of reciprocity. While the Latin American countries have greatly opened up their trade sector to foreign competition, most industrial nations have continued to follow protectionist practices. In fact, as captured in Table 7.21, the industrial countries have traditionally imposed significant restrictions on Latin American exports. These trade impediments have primarily taken the form of non-tariff barriers, including quotas, prohibitions, and licenses. The approval of GATT’s Uruguay Round package in December 1993 provides some hope that in the years to come multilateralism could result in a more open world trade system. (See Table 7.22 for a summary of the Uruguay Round’s most important implications for Latin America.)

Table 7.21.

Nontariff Barrier Coverage of OECD Countries Against Latin American Exports, mid-1980s

(In percent)

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Source: Learner (1990).
Table 7.22.

Significance of the Uruguay Round for Latin American Countries

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Before 1947, when the first round of multilateral trade negotiations was held in Geneva, average tariff protection in industrial countries was above 100 percent.59 Fueled by the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, protectionist ideas grew during the first decades of the century, leading the world economy into the Great Depression. By 1993, after seven rounds of GATT sponsored negotiations, average tariffs had been reduced to 5 percent. However, in spite of this lowering of import tariffs, most industrial countries continued to use extensively an array of nontariff barriers that effectively raised the degree of protectionism. By 1993, developing country imports into some industrial countries were, for all practical purposes, prohibited.

The liberalization of world trade contemplated in the Uruguay Round will be implemented gradually over a ten-year period. From an institutional point of view, one of the most important elements of the agreement is the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO), which is to replace GATT in 1995. Market access negotiations, which will largely determine the actual extent of the liberalization effort, are expected to be completed at the Morocco ministerial meeting of April 1994.

Some authors (Corden, 1984, for example) have argued that regional integration schemes will serve as intermediate steps toward a more perfect multilateral system based on GATT and, subsequently, the WTO. There are, however, some problems with this idea. The current structure of trading blocs is not cooperative across groups, so that the gains from more trade within blocs have to be compared with the losses from less trade between groups. Moreover, the United States is currently pushing forward a policy of reciprocity rather than one of free trade.

The Uruguay Round covers trade in agriculture and textiles, services, and investment regulations. Overall, according to the agreement, industrial countries’ average trade-weighted tariffs on developing country exports will have to be reduced by 34 percent in ten years (from 6.4 percent to 4 percent). Developing countries, in turn, have committed themselves to increasing the coverage of bound duties and to remove export subsidies. In some cases, the reduction is expected to be impressive; Brazil, for instance, committed itself to lowering import tariffs from a maximum of 105 percent to a ceiling of 35 percent. Trade-distorting investment measures, such as local content requirements, are also to be eliminated in five to seven years.

The streamlining of intellectual property protection is expected to help some developing countries that have started exporting knowledge-intensive goods, such as software and agriculture-related technology. However, the liberalization measures agreed upon in December 1993 are rather timid in some areas—especially in agriculture—and the implementation timetable is too lengthy. Safeguard rules are expected to be softened and could be introduced in the future in a discriminatory way and without compensation. It is possible that these antidumping measures will give rise to a new form of disguised protectionism.

The successful completion of the Uruguay Round is expected to provide both static and dynamic gains to the world economy. The developing countries’ share of these gains will be about one-third. Trade is expected to grow by 12 percent in the next ten years, owing exclusively to the Uruguay Round. Developing countries, however, will not receive a significant share of the dynamic gains because economies of scale and technological spillovers through greater innovation are likely to accrue to exporters of industrial goods.

Appendix. Productivity Growth and Commercial Policy: An Econometric Analysis

A number of researchers have found that factor accumulation explains between one-half and two-thirds of long-run growth (Fischer, 1988). The large unexplained residual in growth-accounting exercises has been attributed to “technological progress” or “productivity gains.” From a policy perspective, a key question is what determines these productivity improvements. In particular, it is important to understand whether national domestic policies—including financial and trade policies—can affect the pace of productivity growth. If this is the case, policymakers will have additional degrees of freedom to pursue those avenues that will enhance long-run performance.60

The recent interest in endogenous growth models has generated a revival in applied research on the determinants of growth. Some authors have emphasized the role of openness in determining the pace at which countries can absorb technological progress originating in the rest of the world (Grossman and Helpman, 1991). Edwards (1992) has recently assumed that there are two sources of TFP growth: (1) a purely domestic source stemming from local technological improvements (innovation); and (2) a foreign source related to the absorption of inventions generated in other countries (imitation). More specifically, assume that a country’s ability to appropriate or imitate world technical innovations depends on two factors: positively on the degree of openness (y) of the economy and, also positively, on the gap between the country’s level of TFP and the world’s stock of TFP. The first channel is the “openness effect” discussed by Lewis (1955): more open countries have an advantage in absorbing new ideas generated in the rest of the world. In this context “more open” should be interpreted as referring to a less distorted foreign trade sector. The second channel is a “catch-up” effect common to growth models based on “convergence” notions.

If the aggregate production function is defined as yt = Af(Kt, Lt), then total factor productivity is At = yt/f(·), and total productivity growth is (A˙/A). The role of the two sources of technical progress discussed above—innovation and imitation—can be captured by the following, simple expression:
A˙A=α+[βω+γ(A*−AA)],(A.1)

where a and y are parameters, A* is the level of world’s appropriable TFP, and co is the rate of growth of the world’s TFP (that is At*=A0*eωt). β is a parameter between zero and one that measures the country’s ability to absorb productivity improvements originating in the rest of the world and is assumed to be a negative function of the level of trade distortions in the economy (δ).

β=β(δ);β , < 0 , ( A .2 )

where δ is an index of trade distortions that takes a higher value when international trade, both in imports and/or exports, becomes more distorted.

Parameter a is the basic rate of domestic productivity growth or innovation, which, for simplicity, is assumed to be exogenous. On the other hand, (γ(A * −A) /A) is the catch-up term that says that domestic productivity growth will be faster in countries where the stock of knowledge lags further behind the world’s accumulated stock of appropriable knowledge.61

In this setting, the path through time of domestic TFP will be given by62

A t = [ A 0 − ( γ γ+ω(1−β)−α ) A 0 * ] e −(γ−α−βω ) t + ( γ γ+ω(1−β)−α ) A 0 * e ω t . ( A .3 )

It follows from equation (A.3) that the long-run rate of growth of domestic TFP will depend on whether (γ−α−βω)

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0. If (γ−α−βω) > 0 in the steady state, TFP will grow at the rate of the world’s productivity ω. This means that the level of domestic TFP (and of GDP) will be a function of the degree of trade intervention, with higher trade distortions resulting in a lower level of real income. A key implication of this result is that countries that engage in trade liberalization programs will be characterized, during the transition between two steady states, by higher rates of productivity growth and thus by faster rates of GDP growth.

A second case appears when (γ − α − βω) < 0. Long-run TFP growth (A/A) will depend on how large the world’s rate of growth of TFP (ω) is relative to the domestic rate of productivity improvement. If ω > (α − δ)/ (1 − β), domestic TFP will grow in the steady state at the world rate co. If, however, ω < (α − γ)/(l − β), and (γ − α − βω) < 0, the long-run equilibrium rate of TFP growth will be equal to (α + βω − δ) 63 and will depend negatively on δ, the country’s level of trade distortions. That is, in this case more open countries (those with low δ) will grow faster during steady-state equilibrium. This is because in this case the domestic source of technological inventions is strong enough, even in the steady state, to drive the aggregate rate of technological innovations.64

The model developed above suggests that TFP growth will depend on the degree of trade distortions in the economy and on a catch-up term that measures the gap between the country’s and the world’s level of productivity. A cross-country data set was used to test these implications of this model. More specifically, equations of the following type can be estimated:
ρn=b0+b1δn+b2gn+Σatxin+μn,(A.4)

where ρn is the average rate of growth of TFP in country n; Δn is, as before, an index of trade distortions; gn is the catch-up term; the xt’s are other possible determinants of TFP growth; and μ is an error term.

Recently, Barro (1991), Edwards (1992), and Roubini and Sala-i-Martin (1992), among others, have suggested that in addition to the degree of openness, productivity growth will also be affected by the following factors: (1) human capital, usually measured by level of education; (2) the importance of government in the economy measured by the ratio of government expenditure to GDP; (3) the degree of political instability; and (4) the inflation rate. In the estimations of equation (A.4) reported above, these variables have been incorporated as possible determinants of productivity growth. Variables were defined in the following way:

TFP growth: A problem with estimating equations of the type of (A.4) is the measurement of TFP growth. In particular, it is difficult to obtain long time series of capital stocks for a large number of countries. In this appendix, three measures of TFP growth constructed by Edwards (1992) are used.

Trade distortions: Traditionally, studies that have investigated the relationship between trade policy and economic performance have had difficulties measuring the extent of trade distortions. This analysis uses two variables: first, in most of the basic estimates the ratio of total taxes on foreign trade—import tariffs plus export taxes—to total trade is used as a proxy for trade distortions. This variable is measured as an average for 1971–82. Since this variable, denoted TRADETAX, measures the “true” extent of trade distortions with error, in the estimation of the TFP growth equation, an instrumental variable technique that tries to correct for measurement error is also used. The second proxy is the 1971–82 average trade dependency ratio—imports plus exports as a percentage of GDP. These two indices of trade distortions were constructed with raw data obtained from the IMF.

Catch-up term: Following the recent literature on endogenous growth (Barro 1991; Edwards, 1992), initial GDP per capita—for 1971 in this case—represents the gap between a particular country’s level of productivity and that of the world. This variable is denoted as GDP71; the data were obtained from Summers and Heston (1988). The coefficient of this variable is expected to be negative.

Human capital: Two indices are used. The first one is the attainment of secondary education in 1981. The second one is the increase in secondary education coverage between 1961 and 1981. When alternative indices, such as secondary and higher education, were used, the results obtained were not altered. The data were obtained from the World Bank’s World Development Report. The coefficient of this variable is expected to be positive.

Role of government: This index is defined as the share of government in GDP and is taken from Summers and Heston (1988). Barro (1991) has argued that this coefficient should be negative, capturing the effect that greater government activities tend, in general, to crowd out the private sector.

Political instability: This variable was defined as the average perceived probability of government change and was obtained from Cukierman, Edwards, and Tabellini (1992).65 Its coefficient in the TFP growth equations is expected to be negative, reflecting the fact that in politically unstable situations economic agents do not devote their full energies to pursuing economic objectives.

Inflation tax: This variable was defined as the average collection of the inflation tax for 1971–82 and was computed as πm, where π is the rate of inflation and m is the ratio of M1 to GDP. The coefficient of this variable is expected to be negative, reflecting the effects of higher inflation on uncertainty and economic activity.

Tables 7.A1 and Tables 7.A2 summarize the results obtained from the estimation of several versions of equation (A.4). Tables 7.A1 contains weighted least-squares estimates—with population in 1971 as weight—for all three measures of TFP growth; 66 Tables 7.A2 presents instrumental variable regressions for the TFPl definition of productivity growth. (When the other two indices were used, the results were not altered significantly.)

Table 7.A1.

TFP Growth Regressions, Cross-Country Results

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Note: For exact explanations on how TFP1, TFP2, and TFP3 were constructed, see Edwards (1992). t-statistics are in parentheses; N is the number of observations; and R2 is the coefficient of determination.
Table 7.A2.

TFP Growth Regressions

(Dependent variable–TFP 1)

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Note: t-statistics are in parentheses; N is the number of observations ; and R2 is the coefficient of determination. Equations are weighted by population in 1971.

As can be seen from these tables, the results are highly satisfactory. Almost every coefficient has the expected sign and is significant at conventional levels. Particularly important for the discussion pursued in this paper is the fact that in every regression the proxies for trade distortions and openness are highly significant. Moreover, the computation of standardized beta coefficients indicates that, after the catch-up term, trade impediments are the second most important explanatory variable of TFP growth.67

As pointed out above, both the TRADETAX coefficient and the trade dependency ratio are imperfect proxies of trade distortions. In particular, they do not directly capture the role of quantitative restrictions on trade. To deal with this measurement error problem, instrumental variable versions of some of these equations were also estimated. In re-estimating equations (A.4.1) and (A.4.2), the trade penetration ratio of imports to GDP was used as an instrument for TRADETAX.68 The results obtained are presented in Table 7. A2. They confirm the results discussed previously and provide additional support for the view that, after controlling for other factors, countries with more open and less distorted foreign trade sectors have tended to exhibit a faster rate of growth of total factor productivity, over the long run, than those countries with a more distorted external sector.

Comment

S. J. Anjaria

I am very grateful to Sebastián Edwards for his paper, which covers a lot of ground in the area of trade and capital movements and exchange rate policy I am glad he concluded on the note of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), because I would like to begin at that point in my comments.

It is useful to remind ourselves that all of the discussion of regional trade arrangements today in Latin America as well as elsewhere is taking place in the context of an existing multilateral trade and payments system. Of course, as a staff member of the IMF, I am particularly aware of the IMF’s role in promoting an open, multilateral system, even though on the trade side the GATT has primary responsibility. As we have just discussed, the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations has been completed, and the implementation of the agreements will strengthen and make more liberal the multilateral trading system. The first point I would like to make is that when we look at any issue dealing with regional arrangements to expand trade, we are not writing on a blank slate but are elaborating on the existing system. Therefore, we must assess the impact that regional arrangements would have on the existing system. I will come back to this later.

Second, I think everyone will agree that the Uruguay Round is a major step forward. The fact that it took seven years to negotiate and caused a great deal of difficulty is indicative of the negotiating and political pain and suffering that went into it. No complete assessment of the effects of the Uruguay Round is available so far, to my knowledge. However, its results are notable both for the success in reducing trade and nontariff barriers and for certain other accomplishments that many thought, even until the last hours or minutes, it could not achieve. I am referring, obviously, to trade in agriculture and trade in services.

Let me add a personal note. I happened to be present as an IMF representative at the Punta del Este conference that launched the Uruguay Round in September 1986. Upon returning to Washington, I had to write a report to our Executive Board about what had happened at the conference. I remember agonizing over how to describe what had been agreed upon as the objectives of the Uruguay Round negotiations in the area of services. Even at the end of the Punta del Este conference, there remained a sharp division between the developing countries, or at least the larger developing countries, and most of the industrial countries on whether trade in services should or should not form part of the negotiations. That was seven years ago. Today there is an agreement on trade in services, and all countries who participated in the negotiations are part of it. There are no dissenting views. This is some indication of the degree to which the mood has changed in all countries about the need to strengthen and extend the multilateral system.

One or two words now about Latin America, very well described and portrayed in the paper by Mr. Edwards. The progress on trade liberalization that has taken place has been well documented. Much of this liberalization took place on a multilateral basis. The best kind of outward-oriented strategy is the kind that is outward-oriented on a multilateral basis rather than on a regional basis. At the same time that they pursued multilateral trade liberalization, Latin American countries have made progress with regional arrangements. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is of course the most recent, spectacular example of this progress—again something that was fought over very actively. Other regional arrangements, as the paper points out, are being put in place or being considered from the standpoint of whether they fulfill the criterion of outward orientation rather than that of inward orientation.

There are two or three questions that we should ask ourselves, in a sort of forward-looking spirit. The first question is whether we have come to the end of trade liberalization in Latin America. The evidence in Table 7.2 of Mr. Edwards’ paper suggests that there is still some way to go toward fuller liberalization before Latin American countries can achieve the level of openness in trade regimes that is typical of the industrial countries. While different countries in Latin America are in different positions, trade liberalization is still an issue and must be pursued.

Second, and in this context, what is the future of regionalism in Latin America? As I said before, some of the new arrangements are outward looking. I think the earlier difficulty with using regional arrangements to promote intraregional trade was that there was a fundamental conflict between the objectives of regional trade liberalization and the objectives of, or the approach to, inward-looking trade policies. One called for more liberalization, the other called for less liberalization, and that conflict, in effect, was resolved too often in favor of inward-looking policies.

If that approach is to be changed, then, indeed, regionalism does have a future. It is essential, however, that regionalism be completely consistent with the multilateral and open trade regime that has just been strengthened under the Uruguay Round. In this respect, one or two suggestions may be useful. One is that if trade is to be liberalized under a regional arrangement, the liberalization schedule should be as automatic as possible. In the past, the experience was that nonautomaticity in the trade liberalization schedule led to difficulties and pressures for protection that delayed liberalization and gave precedence to inward-oriented strategies. Second, and even more important because the issue is usually neglected, regional arrangements, to be consistent with the multilateral framework—particularly Article XXIV of the GATT—must involve liberalization that is as comprehensive as possible. Obviously, the risk of trade diversion is greater in a regime that is selective in the sectors it liberalizes. In brief, if there is automaticity, and if across-the-board actions can be incorporated in the agreement, then, yes, there is a future for regional arrangements.

Finally, one word on exchange rate policy and future trade liberalization. I think if we agree that there is scope for trade liberalization in the future, then for any region as a whole—for Latin America as a whole—we must ask ourselves if some of the discussions that we have had on nominal anchors are somewhat premature. In those countries where future trade liberalization will require compensating real exchange rate adjustments, clearly the possibility of fixing the nominal exchange rate beforehand becomes problematic. I hope we will come back to this point later in our discussion.

Comment

Jaime Ros

For the sake of brevity and comparative advantage, my comments on this paper will focus on some gray areas where I disagree with the author. This means not doing full justice to a paper that I consider to be generally clear and comprehensive. In particular, I will not address the author’s informative discussion of the speed and sequence of trade reforms and his comments on the recent regional free trade agreement initiatives in the hemisphere.

Assessment of the Historic Experience of Latin America

The paper rightly recognizes that the postwar trade system in Latin America was not so much exclusively an import-substitution regime as a hybrid one that combined domestic market protection with export promotion through subsidies, preferential credits, and tariff exemptions. Since the early or mid-1960s, an increasing number of countries (notably, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico) have implemented these types of export-promotion policies in addition to domestic market protection.

A key question raised in the paper is why these export-promotion policies were less successful in Latin America than in East Asia. In addition to the differences in macroeconomic policy management that influenced the effectiveness of trade policies, the author’s response is that the approach taken by the Latin American countries targeted selected industries instead of rewarding export activity in general, as the Asian countries did. I am not sure that this response is convincing because Korea appears to have used a sectoral approach as well. But, more than the response, I am challenging the very basis of the question: When we consider the differences in saving and investment rates and macroeconomic policy management in the two regions, were the Latin American experiences really less successful?

What I wish to suggest is that there was not a fundamental difference between Latin America and East Asia but a continuum of policies and results in which the differences between the Latin American countries (Brazil and Chile, for example) were as great as or greater than those between East Asia and some Latin American countries (for example, Brazil and Korea). In this connection, it should be recalled that in the Krueger and Bhagwati studies of the 1970s,1 the Brazilian case was considered to be one of export-led growth similar to the Korean experience. In general, no one thought to broach the topic of substantial differences in the trade regimes adopted by those two countries or their growth performance at that time. This is not merely an academic point or an attempt to dispute the desirability of a trade regime that is more transparent, less distorted, and less prone to corruption than the prevailing regime in Latin America in the past. Rather, it is a case of understanding that only so much can be expected of trade reform. If too much is expected of it, the result could be distraction from more important tasks for the recovery of growth.

Results Expected from Trade Reform and Recent Experience

This brings me to the following comments on the results of trade reform. I shall concentrate on the dynamic effects on productivity and exports.

My first comment is that my reading of the bibliography on trade openness and dynamic effects on growth and productivity leaves me with a somewhat different impression from the one conveyed by Mr. Edwards. My impression—taking into account the contributions of Bhagwati, Pack, Rodrik, and Tybout, for example—is that the theoretical arguments and empirical research are not conclusive with regard to the possible orientation of these effects. It might be interesting to recall some of the quotations on the subject:

Although the arguments for the success of the EP [export promotion] strategy based on economies of scale and X-efficiency are plausible, empirical support for them is not available. The arguments on savings and innovation provide a less than compelling case for showing that EP is necessarily better on their account than IS [import substitution].2

…to date, there is no clear confirmation of the hypothesis that countries with an external orientation benefit from greater growth in technical efficiency in the component sectors of manufacturing.3

…if truth-in-advertising were to apply to policy advice, each prescription for trade liberalization would be accompanied with a disclaimer:

“Warning! Trade liberalization cannot be shown to enhance technical efficiency; nor has it been empirically demonstrated to do so.” 4

Even though the World Bank is much more adamant about this, it recognizes that “a degree of skepticism is warranted.” 5

My second comment refers to the specific experience of Mexico in recent times. Like the author, I will begin by making a distinction between developments in the manufacturing industry and in the economy as a whole. Labor productivity growth has been spectacular in manufacturing, rising to about 5 percent a year in 1989 (after the second phase of trade opening) and above the historical average. As the paper indicates, the evidence of overall factor productivity in the manufacturing sector also points to this. It is debatable how much of the productivity increase is due to trade reform and how much to other factors, such as the impact of privatization or the response of enterprises to the decline in profitability, because of the appreciation of the currency, of the sectors producing internationally tradable goods. The main problem, in my opinion, is that these increases in productivity have not led to a recovery of economic growth or an improvement in the productivity performance of the economy as a whole. As the paper shows, the overall productivity growth in the economy was below its historical level in the period prior to trade opening.

In a recent paper, I attempted to break down this performance into three sources: (1) productivity growth in high-productivity sectors (including manufacturing); (2) growth attributable to low-productivity sectors (agriculture and services, mainly); and (3) growth associated with the redeployment of jobs from the high- to the low-productivity sectors. The conclusions are clear: the increased productivity growth in the high-productivity sectors was nullified by the flagging performance of the agricultural and services sectors and, to a large extent, by the transfer of jobs from the high-productivity to the low-productivity sectors, related to the reduction in employment in manufacturing and widespread underemployment in agriculture and the services industry. The results suggest that the decline in productivity growth in the economy as a whole is a macroeconomic and endogenous phenomenon linked to the slow pace of GDP growth and, ultimately, to low rates of savings and investment in physical and human capital (in comparison with the historical average), which have characterized the Mexican economy in recent years. This interpretation, which attributes the poor performance of productivity to the lack (until very recently) of reforms (commercial or regulatory) in the agricultural and services sectors, is at variance with that of Edwards. Although this may have led to lower productivity growth than there might have been, it does not, in my opinion, explain the marked decline in productivity performance in relation to the past.

By contrast, export performance since trade has been opened is particularly impressive because of the non-oil export boom the economy has been able to sustain throughout the exchange appreciation of recent years. However, in conclusion, I must add a word of caution. The boom in non-oil exports since the beginning of the 1980s has been associated, to a large extent, with two phenomena: (1) booming exports from the automobile industry, one of the few sectors in which the domestic market remained protected throughout the 1980s and where export growth is linked to changes in the investment and export strategies of North American corporations in the sector under the old industrial and trade policy regime; and (2) the rapid growth of exports from the offshore processing industry, in which trade reform had no impact on the policy regime in effect since the mid-1960s.

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Note: I am indebted to my discussants and conference participants for useful comments. I am thankful to Fernando Losada for excellent research assistance.

1

The material presented in this paper is based on some of the author’s work over the past few years. In particular, it draws on Chapter 5 of World Bank (1993b). See the references to this paper for a list of works related to this topic.

3

See Leff (1969) on Brazil. Bianchi and Nohara (1988) discuss this issue for Latin America as a whole.

4

Raúl Prebisch was a remarkable intellectual force who greatly shaped early Latin American economic thinking. He was the governor of the Argentine central bank in the 1930s and early 1940s, a period when he applied orthodox policies. In 1947, Prebisch published the first Spanish language guide to Keynes’s General Theory. On the evolution of his thinking, see Prebisch (1984). See also, Chapter 1 of Iglesias (1992) and Solís (1988).

5

An interesting summary of this view can be found in Prebisch (1984). Hirschman (1968) provided an early “soul-searching” assessment of the disappointing results experienced under the import-substitution strategies. A review of import-substitution theories appears in Bruton (1989). For a discussion of trade policies in the context of Latin America’s historical development, see Fishlow (1991).

6

See, for example, the popular Paz and Sunkel (1970) textbook for a discussion of economic policy in the context of the structuralist and protectionist views. See also the text on international economics by Ffrench-Davis and Griffin (1967). Castro and Lessa (1969) provided a popular, and widely used, principles text that discussed basic economic issues from a structuralist perspective.

7

This point was strongly made by Diaz-Alejandro (1970) in his monumental study on the external sector in Argentina. See also Diaz-Alejandro’s (1976) work on Colombia. See Edwards (1988, 1989) for discussions on real exchange rate misalignment. It may be argued that, given the level of protectionism that prevailed during this period, observed (and appreciated) real exchange rates were at an “equilibrium” level. However, under this interpretation, the highly appreciated real exchange rates still discouraged nontraditional exports.

8

The discrimination against agriculture during this period contrasts sharply with the case of East Asia, where serious efforts were made to avoid harming that sector. See World Bank (1993a).

9

See Sunkel (1960) for the classic piece on the structuralist view of inflation. Dornbusch and Edwards (1990) examine these issues from the more extreme, populist perspective.

10

As discussed in some detail in Chapter 3 of World Bank (1993b), most authors agree that the import-substitution process rapidly ran into difficulties once low-technology consumer goods had been “substituted.” As countries tried to move toward producing more sophisticated goods—including capital goods and machinery—they faced an increasingly uphill battle. See Hirschman (1968) and Fishlow (1985).

11

The UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean played an important role in developing this diagnosis.

12

No serious recommendations were made, however, to introduce deep structural changes, such as privatizing government-owned firms.

13

See Fishlow (1985) for a discussion of these competing criticisms of import substitution. Edwards and Edwards (1991) discuss this problem from Chile’s perspective. See, also, Sheahan (1987) and Cardoso and Helwege (1992). Vuskovic (1970) provides one of the most eloquent defenses of the dependencista position.

14

See Rabello de Castro and Ronci (1991) for a critical view of sixty years of development policy in Brazil.

15

Coes (1991) provides a thorough evaluation of Brazil’s attempts at encouraging exports during the 1970s.

16

See Kim (1991) for details on the different export-promotion schemes used.

17

In Latin America, there has been a controversy on the actual effectiveness of export subsidies. See, for example, Nogués and Gulati (1992).

18

See Edwards (1992) for a general discussion on the sequencing of economic reform.

19

Of course, this amounts to the important textbook notion that freer trade increases the level of domestic welfare. However, modern approaches go beyond this goal and also consider the acceleration of growth as a goal of trade policy (see Edwards, 1992).

20

Traditional neoclassical growth models concentrated on the effect of national economic policies on the level of income per capita. The new generation of endogenous growth models has shifted attention to the relationship between different policies and the rate of growth of the economy (see Lucas, 1988).

21

In Chapter 17 of his Principles of Political Economy (1848), Mill said that “a country that produces for a larger market than its own can introduce a more extended division of labor, can make greater use of machinery, and is more likely to make inventions and improvements in the process of production.” Arthur Lewis makes a similar proposition in his classic 1955 book on economic growth.

22

See Tybout (1992) for a general survey of empirical models of the relationship between trade orientation and growth of total factor productivity. See also Edwards (1992) and De Gregorio (1992).

23

Lal (1985) presents a dissenting view. Hanson (1992) has argued that under some circumstances the capital account should be liberalized early on. See Chapter 7 of World Bank (1993b) for a discussion on sequencing issues with financial reform.

24

This would be the case if the opening of the capital account were done in the context of an overall liberalization program, where the country becomes attractive to foreign investors and speculators.

25

Of course, this discussion is related to a second-best analysis of policy measures.

26

For early discussions of the sequencing debates, see Edwards (1984) and Fischer (1986).

27

These elements have been present in most sustained reforms studied in recent times. See, for example, Little, Scitovsky, and Scott (1970), Krueger (1978), and Michaely, Papageorgiou, and Choksi (1991) for extensive case studies.

28

These are unweighted averages, and are thus not comparable to those presented in Table 7.1. There has been a long discussion in applied international trade theory on whether tariffs and NTBs should be measured as weighted or unweighted averages. Both views have some merits and some limitations. An obvious problem of the weighted-average approach (where the weights are the import shares) is that more restrictive distortions will tend to have a very small weight. In the extreme case, prohibitive tariffs that effectively ban the importation of a particular item will have a zero weight. Corden (1966) provides an early and still highly relevant discussion on these issues.

29

Protecting local producers from “dumping” is an important issue in the design of the new, liberalized trade regimes. The crucial problem is to enact legislation that is able to distinguish true cases of unfair trade practices from simple cases of increased foreign competition stemming from more efficient productive processes. Approving a dynamic and flexible antidumping legislation should be high on the region’s current agenda for legal and institutional reform.

30

This system with low (or zero) tariffs on intermediate inputs and high tariffs on final goods generated high rates of effective protection or protection to domestic value added. In recent years, a number of authors have argued that the use of effective protection is misleading. The reason for this is that effective rates of protection are unable to provide much information on the general equilibrium consequences of tariff changes (Dixit, 1985). In spite of this, such measures are still useful because they provide an indication of the degree of “inefficiency” a country is willing to accept for a particular sector.

31

However, the term “tariffs” is sometimes misleading because many countries have traditionally relied on both import duties (that is, tariffs proper) and import duty surcharges or para-tariffs. See Harberger (1990) for a discussion on the actual mechanics for reducing uneven tariffs.

32

Some countries, notably Brazil, Chile, and Colombia, experimented with crawling pegs as early as the 1960s. However, only Colombia maintained a regime that avoided real exchange rate overvaluation.

33

See Corbo, Condon, and De Melo (1985) for a detailed microeconomic account of the process of adjustment in a large group of Chilean manufacturing firms.

34

The original TFP growth data comes from Martin’s (1992) study on sources of growth in Latin America. The countries in Table 7.4 are those that initiated the reform before 1988. To compute series on TFP growth, Martin analyzed the contributions of capital and labor and explicitly incorporated the role of changes in the degree of capital utilization. The countries considered in this study are Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Harberger (1990) presents data on productivity growth before and after a series of historical trade reform episodes. He finds that in the majority of the countries, productivity growth increased after liberalization.

35

It may be argued, however, that the major increase in productivity growth in Chile has been the result of the complete structural reform package implemented in that country.

36

In a series of recent studies, Ocampo (1991) has calculated total factor productivity growth in Colombia and found that the increase in protectionism in 1982–85 was accompanied by a decline in productivity growth.

37

However, according to Harberger’s data, TFP growth in 1986–90 exceeds the level of immediate postcrisis years. The actual growth numbers calculated by Harberger are the following: 1950–60 = 3.8; 1960–75 = 39; 1975–82 = 2.5; 1982–86 = −.8; 1986–90 = 0.8. An important difference between the Martin and Harberger computations is that the former does not make corrections for different degrees of capacity utilization.

38

A number of observers have argued that the titling process will, by itself, take between five and ten years.

39

Because these figures come from two different sources, they may not be fully comparable and should thus be interpreted with care.

40

See, for example, Nogues and Gulati (1992).

41

This issue, however, remains controversial. Some authors (Sachs, 1987) have pointed to the Korean experience to suggest that government policies in support of exports may be beneficial.

42

A large percentage of this growth, however, has been in the maquiladora, or in-bond, sector.

43

Also, the reduction in internal demand could have affected the recent rapid growth in exports.

44

An important peculiarity of the Colombian case is that the original inflow of foreign exchange came through the trade account.

45

More specifically, with this option the one-digit inflationary goal will be postponed.

46

See Schott (1991) for a general discussion on the recent formation, and prospects, of trading blocs in the global economy.

47

MERCOSUR comprises Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. The members of the Andean Pact are Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela. Chile withdrew from the Andean Pact in 1974.

48

The legal document that sets the basis for Mercosur is the Asunción Treaty, whose origins lie in an integration act signed between Argentina and Brazil in 1986. New acts were signed between these two countries in 1989 and 1990. For details, see Nogues and Quintanilla(1992).

49

Chile was invited to join but declined. Chile, however, is moving briskly toward integration with Argentina through the signature of bilateral agreements.

50

Baldinelli (1991) discusses some of the most important macroeconomic policies in the MERCOSUR countries.

51

The data in the table are for 1992. Historically, Brazil’s intraregional trade has been significantly lower—on the order of 4 percent of total exports.

52

The higher the common external tariff, the more likely it is that a customs union will have net negative welfare effects on its members. The reason is that there will be additional trade diversion. Commodities that, at the original tariff, were imported from the least expensive source will be imported from a less efficient regional member. On trade creation and trade diversion see, for example, Dornbusch (1989). Notice, however, that the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade does not allow the common tariff to exceed the members’ average before the union. It is unclear, however, whether this provision can actually be enforced.

53

On historical integrationist attempts in Latin America, see Edwards and Savastano (1988).

54

Chile, an original signatory of the pact, declined to participate.

55

Nogués and Quintanilla (1992) provide a detailed account of the Act of La Paz.

56

The new political development in Peru, and especially the Fujimori “coup,” have added considerable uncertainty to the integrationist process.

57

This collapse was partially the result of Nicaragua’s accumulation of a very large debt. See Saborio and Michalopoulos (1992).

58

The details of the agreement appear in the Declaration of San Salvador, July 17, 1991.

59

This paragraph and those that follow are based on Losada (1994).

60

This appendix is based partially on Edwards (1992).

61

It is assumed that not all inventions generated in the world can be freely appropriated. In that sense, A* could be interpreted as the accumulated stock of innovations in the more advanced countries that have spilled over to the rest of the world.

62

This, of course, is the solution to differential equation (A. I).

63

Of course in this case (α + βω − δ) > ω.

64

In Grossman and Helpman’s (1990) micro model of technological progress, it is also possible that, under some circumstances, more open economies will exhibit higher long-run growth.

65

These authors computed this index from a probit analysis on government change using pooled data for 1948–81.

66

In simple, ordinary least-squares estimates, heteroscedasticity was detected. Barro (1991) and Edwards (1992), among others, also use weighted least squares in equations of this type.

67

In equation (4) the standardized beta coefficient of taxes on trade is -0.75; that of GDP71 is -0.78.

68

The instruments themselves do not have to be measured free of error. Of course, the use of instrumental variables is not the only way of dealing with measurement error. Edwards (1992) used reversed regressions to construct intervals for a different proxy of openness in standard growth equations.

1

See Anne O. Krueger, Liberalization Attempts and Consequences (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Ballinger, 1978) and Jagdish Bhagwati, Anatomy and Consequences of Exchange Control Regimes, Vol. 2, Foreign Trade Regimes and Economic Development (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Ballinger, 1978).

2

Jagdish Bhagwati, “Export-Promoting Trade Strategy: Issues and Evidence,” World Bank Research Observer, Vol. 3 (January 1988), p. 40.

3

Howard Pack, “Industrialization and Trade,” in Handbook of Development Economics, ed. by H. Chenery and T. N. Srinivasan (Amsterdam; New York: North-Holland, 1988), p. 38.

4

Dani Rodrik, “Closing the Productivity Gap: Does Trade Liberalization Really Help?” in Trade Policy, Industrialization and Development: New Perspectives, ed. by G. K. Helleiner (Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1992), p. 172.

5

World Bank, World Development Report 1991 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 98.

Within Same Series

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Cover Policies for Growth
Policies for Growth
The Latin American Experience: Proceedings of a Conference held in Mangaratiba, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, March 16-19, 1994
ISBN:
9781557755179
Publication Date:
28 Sep 1995
Publisher:
International Monetary Fund
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5089/9781557755179.071
Pages:
275
  • Chart 7.1.
    View in gallery
    Chart 7.1.

    Real Effective Exchange Rates in Selected Latin American Countries

    (1985= 100)

Chart 7.1.

Real Effective Exchange Rates in Selected Latin American Countries

(1985= 100)