The Role of Exports and Foreign Capital in Latin American Economic Growth: I. Introduction

The contributions and costs of international trade and foreign investment inflows to Latin America and other developing areas continue to be analyzed and debated by theorists, statisticians, and public policy makers. Much of the debate, especially regarding foreign direct investment, centers around distributional effects and noneconomic issues such as national sovereignty. However, the simpler, more basic economic question of the importance of the contributions of foreign trade and capital to growth of national production also remains a subject of controversy.