Mexico and export-led growth: the Porfirian period revisited

This paper examines Mexico's development experience during the ‘golden age’ of export-led growth in Latin America. Propelled by liberal reforms under the Porflrio Diaz regime (1877–1910), Mexico's exports expanded at unprecedented rates, and this is widely believed to have brought about rapid growth and far-reaching structural changes to the domestic economy. This paper questions this view. Using a new and more comprehensive data set, it argues that buoyant export performance had relatively little impact on key macroeconomic and sectoral indicators. The pre 1911 Mexican experience is thus shown to be quite distinct from that of other large primary producing countries such as Argentina and Canada, where rapid economic growth was largely export-led.