Trade Liberalisation and Economic Performance: Latin America versus East Asia 1970-2006

This paper, together with four other country case studies, is a part of a broader research programme addressing trade and structural adjustment issues in non-member economies which was conducted as a follow-up to Trade and Structural Adjustment: Embracing Globalisation (OECD, 2005) which identified policies for successful trade-related structural adjustment. This paper studies the trade liberalisation and structural adjustment experiences and their outcomes in terms of economic and trade performance in East Asia and Latin America. The report consists of 5 main sections; After an introduction, Section A first looks at the growth performance and role of trade and FDI. Section B looks at trade related policy trends in the two regions while section C looks at some trade and foreign direct investment indicators. Section D compares the structural adjustment in the two regions and Section E concludes.