China and Mexico embarked, around the early 1980s, on the process of liberalization of trade and FDI and established some export oriented industries through assembly operations with the help of FDI. Both countries had the same objective of increasing value added in export processing industries....

Previous work has shown that the results of both China and Mexicos export-led market reforms over the past quarter century have been strikingly different. In contrast to China, Mexico has not managed to increase the value added of its exports of manufactured goods and has subsequently had a...