A Summary of the Principal Findings of the Case-Study on the Technological Behaviour of the Mexican Steel Firm Altos Hornos de Mexico

Abstract

The industrial development model followed by Mexico and many other Latin American countries since the 1940s gave high priority to the substitution of imports from developed countries. With the aim of favouring the creation of firms able to achieve scale economies in production and thus remove the effects of competition from more efficient producers, an extraordinarily large (and sometimes chaotic) set of trade, tax, and monetary instruments, was implemented by the government. In addition the Public Sector went itself into production acting as a direct supplier of raw materials at subsidized prices.