Mexico, a prominent liberalizer, failed to attain stellar gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the 1990s, and since 2001 its GDP and exports have stagnated. In this paper we argue that the lack of spectacular growth in Mexico cannot be blamed on either the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or the other reforms that were implemented, but on the lack of further judicial and structural reform after 1995. In fact, the benefits of liberalization can be seen in the extraordinary growth of exports and foreign domestic investment (FDI). The key to the Mexican puzzle lies in Mexico's response to crisis: a deterioration in contract enforceability and an increase in nonperforming loans. As a result, the credit crunch in Mexico has been far deeper and far more protracted than in the typical developing country. The credit crunch has hit the nontradables sector especially hard and has generated bottlenecks, which have blocked growth in the tradables sector and have contributed to the recent fall in exports.
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Paper provided by CESifo GmbH in its series CESifo Working Paper Series with number
CESifo Working Paper No. 1155.
Find related papers by JEL classification: E20 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomics: Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - General (includes Measurement and Data) E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy F30 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - General F43 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance - - - Economic Growth of Open Economies G15 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - International Financial Markets O40 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - General O50 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - General
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Helpman, Elhanan & Melitz, Marc J & Yeaple, Stephen R, 2003.
"Export versus FDI,"
CEPR Discussion Papers
3741, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
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Elhanan Helpman & Marc J. Melitz & Stephen R. Yeaple, 2003.
"Export versus FDI,"
NBER Working Papers
9439, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
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