Cycles of Creation and Destruction of Production and Technological Capabilities in Latin America.

For more than three decades, Latin American countries have opened up their economies to foreign competition, de-regulated markets, and privatized economic activities at different times and with varying degrees of success. Such actions involved a major departure in policy regime from the inward-oriented, state-led regime, which prevailed in the immediate post-war period. The new regime — together with the rapid process of globalization of the world economy that occurred throughout the 1990's — induced a major transformation of the economic, institutional, and technological scenario of each one of the countries in the region. This chapter examines how the new policy regime affected growth, international competitiveness, equity, and the development of domestic technological capabilities