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Nontraditional Export Promotion in Costa Rica: Sustaining Export-Led Growth*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Mary A. Clark
Mary A. Clark*
Affiliation:
Tulane University
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Extract

In many Latin American countries during the 1980s, domestic elites joined with international development institutions to advocate structural adjustment policies as the solution to the region's “lost decade.” Proponents of such policies sought economic rejuvenation based on export-led growth (ELG) strategies. The new ELG programs were to replace importsubstituting industrialization (ISI) schemes and complement traditional primary commodity exports with new agricultural and industrial exports (nontraditionals). It was hoped that these Latin American nations would replicate the spectacular growth patterns of the East Asian “dragons” by exploiting comparative advantages to build nontraditional export industries.

Whereas ELG strategies have proven to be sustainable over the long-term in East Asia, research on the evolution of such policies in Latin America is only beginning. The problem of sustainability bedevils all ELG programs, particularly in those countries which relied on external actors to design the new policies and fund supporting institutions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , Summer 1995 , pp. 181 - 224
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 1995

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Footnotes

*

Funding for this research has been provided by the Mellon Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Institute for the Study of World Politics, and the Organization of American States. The research was completed when the author was a visiting scholar at the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) in Costa Rica during July-August 1994. The author would like to thank the members of the Tulane Latin American Political Economy Workshop and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on this paper.

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