Rethinking Foreign Investment for Development

by Gallagher, Kevin P.

• ISBN13: 9781843313168
• ISBN10: 1843313162
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-02-01
• Publisher: Anthem Pr

Summary

After almost twenty-five years of experimenting with the neo-liberal economic reforms collectively known as "Washington Consensus" policies, Latin Americans are starting to re-assess the merits of these policies at the voting booth. Many newly elected governments are beginning to scrutinize the role of foreign direct investment (FDI) in particular, and some nations have gone so far as to nationalize foreign firms. Without endorsing or condoning the actions taken by these governments, this volume demonstrates that it is quite rational for governments in the region to re-evaluate the role of FDI for their development paths. The great promise of FDI by multinational corporations is that capital will flow into your country and be a source of dynamic growth. Beyond boosting income and employment, the hope was that manufacturing FDI would bring knowledge spillovers that would build the skill and technological capacities of local firms, catalyzing broad-based economic growth; and environmental spillovers that would mitigate the domestic ecological impacts of industrial transformation. Consisting of country case studies and comparative analyses from Latin American and U.S.-based political economists, this volume finds that when FDI did materialize if often fell far short of generating the necessary linkages required to make FDI work for sustainable economic development.

Author Biography

Kevin P. Gallagher is Assistant Professor of International Relations at Boston University and Research Associate at the Global Development and Environment Institute. He is the author of The Enclave Economy: Foreign Investment and Sustainable Development in Mexico's Silicon Valley (with Lyuba Zarsky), and Free Trade and the Environment: Mexico, NAFTA, and Beyond, and he has co-edited a number of books, including Putting Development First: the Importance of Policy Space in the WTO and IFIs, International Trade and Sustainable Development, and others. Professor Gallagher writes a monthly column on globalization and development for the Guardian. Daniel Chudnovsky (1944-2007) was Director of the Centro de Investigaciones para la Transformacin (CENIT) and Professor at the Universidad de San Andrs where he taught courses on Development Economics, International Business and Technological Innovation in undergraduate and postgraduate programs. He worked as an economist for UNCTAD in Geneva, Switzerland, and as the first Director of the Center for International Economics in Buenos Aires. He was Director of CENIT since its foundation.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	p. vii
List of Tables	p. ix
Foreword	p. xiii
Acknowledgements	p. xxi
Author Biographies	p. xxiii
FDI and Sustainable Development in the Americas	p. 1
Is Foreign Investment Always Good for Development?	p. 21
Country Assessments	p. 31
Islands of Possibility: MNCs and Economic Development in Brazil	p. 33
Foreign Investment: The Polarization of the Mexican Economy	p. 51
A Missed Opportunity: Foreign Investment and Sustainable Development in Argentina	p. 77
Foreign Investment and Economic Development in Costa Rica: The Unrealized Potential	p. 97
Political Economy of Natural Resources and The Environment	p. 125
Investment Rules and Sustainable Development: Preliminary Lessons from the Uruguayan Pulp Mills Case	p. 127
Foreigners in the Forests: Saviors or Invaders?	p. 147
Bucking the Trend: The Political Economy of Natural Resources in Three Andean Countries	p. 179
Beyond Pollution Haloes: The Environmental Effects of FDI in The Pulp and Paper and Petrochemicals Sectors in Brazil	p. 201
Missing Links, Dashed Hopes: FDI Spillovers and Sustainable Industrial Development in Mexico's Silicon Valley	p. 217
Notes	p. 241
References	p. 253
Index	p. 267
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