文档介绍：FDI, EXPORTS AND IMPORTS IN MEXICO 1157
Foreign Direct Investment, Exports
and Imports in Mexico
Penélope Pacheco-López
University of Kent
1. INTRODUCTION
INCE the mid-1980s, and particularly since the signing of the North American
SFree Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, there has been a large increase
of foreign direct investment (FDI) into Mexico. The Mexican government has
pursued an active policy of lowering entry barriers to investment from foreign
multinational corporations (MNCs) in the hope that FDI will promote economic
development through knowledge spillovers and a faster growth of exports. In
2001, Mexico was the largest FDI recipient in Latin America (UNCTAD, 2002),
and it became the second largest trading developing country in the world (WTO,
2001) with nearly two-thirds of the country’s ing from MNCs
(UNCTAD, 2002).
The purpose of this paper is three-fold; firstly to examine the FDI liberalisa-
tion process in Mexico and to present a descriptive analysis of the performance
of FDI; secondly to explore the causality relationships between FDI and exports
and imports, and thirdly to conclude with a brief critical evaluation of FDI
for Mexico’s economic development. The effects of FDI in general can be far-
reaching, with evidence that FDI impacts significantly on efficiency, employ-
ment, factor prices and In the case of Mexico, various studies have focused
on the impact of FDI on labour productivity (Blomström and Persson, 1983; and
Blomström, 1988), wages (Feenstra and Hanson, 1997), and growth (Ramírez,
2000; and Griffiths and Sapsford, 2003). However, despite the rapid growth
of both FDI and trade, the effects of FDI on exports and imports have not been
extensively explored for Mexico. There is one recent paper on the causal link
between FDI and exports (Alguacil et al., 2002), but the causality linkage between
FDI and imports has not been studied at all.
The author is grateful to Professor Tony Thirlwall for men