IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/ifwkwp/806.html

Do border economies generate comparative advantages for small- and medium-sized enterprises? Evidence from the Maquiladora industry

Author

Listed:
  • Sander, Birgit

Abstract

Maquiladora assembly emerged to solve a specific problem in a specific region. In the mid 1960s, it was designed to absorb unemployment and to foster industrialization at the US-Mexican border. In the course of its development, it developed considerable dynamics with respect to both regional distribution and technological diversification. Beyond initial intentions, maquiladora assembly proved to be a powerful instrument to foster modernization and international integration of the Mexican economy. Maquiladora assembly is based on factor price differentials and a favourable location with respect to the US-market. It has been developed by private agents learning to tap these potentials. They successfully intensified labour division among themselves. Most importantly, they invented so-called Shelter Plan arrangements as privately marketed services to overcome risk barriers to international integration. A passive, i.e. liberal stance of economic policy proved to be supportive. The implication for economic policy in transformation economies is that an adequate assignment of responsibilities among market and state is at least as important as efficient labour division among private agents.

Suggested Citation

  • Sander, Birgit, 1997. "Do border economies generate comparative advantages for small- and medium-sized enterprises? Evidence from the Maquiladora industry," Kiel Working Papers 806, Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:ifwkwp:806
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/954/1/227785444.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Peres Núñez, Wilson, 1993. "Industrial policy: where do we stand?," Revista CEPAL, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), December.
    2. Gerling, Katja, 1997. "East-west corporate networking: A theoretical approach," Kiel Working Papers 805, Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
    3. Pindyck, Robert S, 1991. "Irreversibility, Uncertainty, and Investment," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 29(3), pages 1110-1148, September.
    4. Nestor Enrique Cruz, 1995. "Volume 5 Appendix A: The Rules of the Game," Annual Proceedings, The Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, vol. 5.
    5. Schmidt, Klaus-Dieter, 1996. "Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in international business: A survey of recent literature," Kiel Working Papers 721, Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gerling, Katja & Schmidt, Klaus-Dieter, 2000. "Zur Arbeitsteilung zwischen Regionen: Das nordöstliche Brandenburg aus der Sicht der regionalökonomischen Theorie," Kiel Working Papers 965, Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
    2. Stoyan Totev, 1999. "Structural Changes during Transition: Prerequisites for Integration and Economic Cooperation," Economic Studies journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 3, pages 28-58.
    3. Sander, Birgit & Schmidt, Klaus-Dieter, 1998. "Wirtschaftliche Perspektiven von Grenzregionen: ein internationaler Vergleich," Open Access Publications from Kiel Institute for the World Economy 1785, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    4. Engel, Dirk, 1999. "Der Einfluß der Grenznähe auf die Standortwahl von Unternehmen: Eine theoretische Analyse und empirische Befunde für Ostdeutschland," ZEW Discussion Papers 99-18, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    5. Gerling, Katja & Schmidt, Klaus-Dieter, 1998. "Emerging East-West corporate networks in Central European border regions: Some theoretical arguments and stylized facts," Kiel Working Papers 852, Kiel Institute for the World Economy.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Shively, Gerald E., 2001. "Price thresholds, price volatility, and the private costs of investment in a developing country grain market," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 399-414, August.
    2. Wong, Kit Pong & Yi, Long, 2013. "Irreversibility, mean reversion, and investment timing," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 770-775.
    3. Halldén, Filip & Hultberg, Anna & Ahmed, Ali & Uddin, Gazi Salah & Yahya, Muhammad & Troster, Victor, 2025. "The role of institutional quality on public renewable energy investments," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 215(C).
    4. Weaver, Robert D. & Moon, Yongma, 2010. "Private Labels: A Mechanism For Fulfilling Consumer Demand For Healthy Food?," 115th Joint EAAE/AAEA Seminar, September 15-17, 2010, Freising-Weihenstephan, Germany 116397, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    5. Zeynel Abidin Ozdemir, 2010. "Dynamics Of Inflation, Output Growth And Their Uncertainty In The Uk: An Empirical Analysis," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 78(6), pages 511-537, December.
    6. Robert N. Stavins, 1998. "A Methodological Investigation of the Costs of Carbon Sequestration," Journal of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 1(2), pages 231-277, November.
    7. Tan Wang & Tony S. Wirjanto, 2016. "Risk Aversion, Uncertainty, Unemployment Insurance Benefit and Duration of "Wait" Unemployment," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 17(1), pages 1-34, May.
    8. Collan, Mikael, 2008. "New Method for Real Option Valuation Using Fuzzy Numbers," Working Papers 466, IAMSR, Åbo Akademi.
    9. Pham T. T. Trinh & Bui T. T. My, 2023. "The impact of world oil price shocks on macroeconomic variables in Vietnam: the transmission through domestic oil price," Asian-Pacific Economic Literature, The Crawford School, The Australian National University, vol. 37(1), pages 67-87, May.
    10. Narain, Urvashi & Fisher, Anthony, 1998. "Irreversibility, Uncertainty, and Catastrophic Global Warming," CUDARE Working Papers 198662, University of California, Berkeley, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
    11. Attanasi, Giuseppe Marco & Montesano, Aldo, 2010. "Testing Value vs Waiting Value in Environmental Decisions under Uncertainty," TSE Working Papers 10-154, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    12. John P. Small & Henry Ergas, 1999. "The Rental Cost of Sunk and Regulated Capital," Econometrics Working Papers 9908, Department of Economics, University of Victoria.
    13. Ramey, Garey & Ramey, Valerie A, 1995. "Cross-Country Evidence on the Link between Volatility and Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(5), pages 1138-1151, December.
    14. Camilo Alberto Cárdenas-Hurtado & Aaron Levi Garavito-Acosta & Jorge Hernán Toro-Córdoba, 2018. "Asymmetric Effects of Terms of Trade Shocks on Tradable and Non-tradable Investment Rates: The Colombian Case," Borradores de Economia 1043, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    15. Panagiotidis, Theodore & Printzis, Panagiotis, 2020. "What is the investment loss due to uncertainty?," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 45(C).
    16. Hahn, Robert & Evans, Lewis, 2010. "Regulating Dynamic Markets: Progress in Theory and Practice," Working Paper Series 4052, Victoria University of Wellington, The New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation.
    17. Zhou, Xi & Xiao, Min & Wu, Huiying & You, Jiaxing, 2024. "Does policy uncertainty travel across borders? Evidence from MNC subsidiary investment decisions," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 163(C).
    18. Gürtler, Marc & Sieg, Gernot, 2006. "Crunch time: The optimal policy to avoid the "Announcement Effect" when terminating a subsidy," Working Papers FW24V2, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Institute of Finance.
    19. Tony Caporale & Barbara McKiernan, 1998. "The Fischer Black Hypothesis: Some Time‐Series Evidence," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 64(3), pages 765-771, January.
    20. Santos, Lúcia & Soares, Isabel & Mendes, Carla & Ferreira, Paula, 2014. "Real Options versus Traditional Methods to assess Renewable Energy Projects," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 588-594.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D20 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - General
    • F15 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Economic Integration

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:ifwkwp:806. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iwkiede.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.