State led investment in Mexico's industrial development : lessons from an Asian tiger

Abstract

For the Less Developed or Developing Countries (LDCs), industrial development, pursued over the years within both the capitalist and socialist systems, has been the basic and arguably most viable strategy for achieving socioeconomic development. This research is an effort to introduce an analysis of the set of ideas surrounding industrial development and its connection with foreign direct investment (FDI). The main research question of this thesis is whether or not control over foreign direct investment determines the level of industrial development in countries such as Mexico in the developing world. For that reason, a comparative analysis is provided to determine why the outcomes so far are presumably different between the industrialization of Mexico and South Korea. Thus this research makes reference to three alternative models for exploring such differences the Neoliberal Model, the South Korean Developmental Model and the Neostructuralist Model.