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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2022
In a significant survey article published in the American Economic Review ten years ago, Leopoldo Solís could regret, not without justification, the lack of a serious tradition of empirical economics research in Mexico. There was no lack of well-trained and creative applied economists; but they were often engaged, then as now, in political action or public administration. Meanwhile, academic economists were engaged in the transmission of received theory (usually foreign) without reference to the realidad nacional or else in vague generalizations. However, the recent bibliographical survey by the Colegio de México, as well as the publications discussed in this review, indicate that the 1970s saw a flourishing of empirical and quantitative work among the two main groups identified by Solís: the neoclassical and monetarist economists on the one hand and the structuralists and radicals on the other. Moreover, there has emerged an increasing differentiation within these groups, spreading the scope of the debate outwards from the center, reflecting the polarization of political attitudes in Mexican society as a whole. Further, as the economists gained positions of power previously reserved for professional politicians, both structuralists such as Tello and neoclassicals such as Solís himself were in a position to translate at least some of their ideas into practice. However, although Solís had suggested that the intellectual advance would be made by economists of the neoclassical persuasion, in the event it was the monetarists and radical writers who appear to have been most fertile in the 1970s.
In this brief review article the vast range of recent writing on the Mexican economy cannot, of course, be covered; the topic under discussion is narrowed, therefore, to the leading issues of macroeconomics, thereby excluding sectoral themes. I am indebted to Rolando Cordera, Pepe Ayala, Jaime Ros, Eduardo Jacobs, and Rosalía Cortés for stimulating discussions on this topic.
1. L. Solís, “Mexican Economic Policy in the Post-War Period: The Views of Mexican Economists,” American Economic Review 61, no. 3 (1971). Indeed, the outstanding quantitative analysis of Mexican economic development had just been written by a gringo, C. W. Reynolds, The Mexican Economy: Twentieth Century Structure and Growth (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970). Solís' paper was later published in amplified form as Controversias sobre el crecimiento y la distribución; las opiniones de economistas mexicanos acerca de la política económica (México, D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1972).
2. El Colegio de México, Ciencias sociales en México: desarrollo y perspectivas (México, D. F.: El Colegio de México, 1979).
3. The importance of this phenomenon, and its exploration by Mexican social scientists, is amply discussed in El Colegio de México Ciencias sociales. For this reviewer's views on the relative autonomy of the Mexican state in the context of postrevolutionary economic development, see “The State and Capital Accumulation in Mexico,” Journal of Latin American Studies 10, no. 2 (1978).
4. This itself is not a new phenomenon either, of course, as Jesús Silva Herzog pointed out some time ago in his magisterial El pensamiento económico en México (México, D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1947).
5. SPFI, Plan Nacional de Desarrollo Industrial, 1978–1982 ((México, D.F.: Secretaría de Patrimonio y Fomento Industrial, 1979). This document has the status of law, and its projections run, in fact, up to 1990.
6. C. Tello, La Política económica en México, 1970–1976 (México, D.F.: Siglo XXI, 1979).
7. Ibid., p. 207.
8. C.I.D.E., Economía mexicana (México, D.F.: Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, 1979).
9. His major work, Teória y práctica de desarrollo, was only published by the Fondo de Cultura Económica in 1976, even though it was written and circulated privately twenty years earlier.
10. That is, using Marx' analytical method without necessarily “Marxist” conclusions.
11. P. Gonzalez and E. Florescano (eds.), México hoy (México, D.F.: Siglo XXI, 1979). The chapter in question is by P. Ayala et al., “La crisis económica: evolución y perspectivas”; the “periodization” idea being attributable to R. Cordera.
12. L. Solís, “A Monetary Will-'o-the-Wisp: Pursuit of Equity through Deficit Spending,” Woodrow Wilson School Discussion Paper No. 77 (Princeton, 1977).
13. J. K. Thompson, Inflation, Financial Markets and Economic Development: The Experience of Mexico (Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1979).
14. For a further discussion of this issue, and its relation to the problem of the influence of the financial community on economic policy, see E. V. K. FitzGerald, “A Note on Capital Accumulation in Mexico: The Budget Deficit and Investment Finance,” Development and Change 11, no. 3 (1980).
15. J. Brothers and L. Solís, Mexican Financial Development (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1966).
16. M. Blejar, Dinero, precios y la balanza de pagos; la experiencia de México, 1960–1973 (México, D.F.: Centro de Estudios Monetarios Latinoamericanos, 1977); D. S. Wilford, Monetary Policy and the Open Economy; Mexico's Experience (New York: Praeger, 1977).
17. A Gomez-Olivier, Dinero, inflación y comercio exterior de México (México, D.F.: Centro de Estudios Monetarios Latinoamericanos, 1978).
18. D. Barkin and G. Esteva, Inflación y democracia: el caso de México (México, D.F.: Siglo XXI, 1979).
19. M. Vellinga, Economic Development and the Dynamics of Class: Industrialization, Power and Control in Monterrey, Mexico (Assen: Van Gorcum & Co., 1979).
20. Banco de México, Cuentos nacionales y acervos de capital, 1950–1967 (México, D.F., 1969); Banco de México, Estadísticas de la Oficina de Cuentas de Producción, 1960–1976 (México, D.F., 1977).
21. These are published continually by the SNI under the general title Información sobre información.
22. SNI, Matriz de insumo producto, 1970 (México, D.F., 1978).
23. SHCP, Aspectos dinámicos de la economía mexicana: un modelo macroeconómico (México, D.F.: Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público, 1979).
24. R. D. Hanson, La política del desarrollo mexicano, 9th ed. (México, D.F.: Siglo XXI, 1979).
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