Global Insertion and Dynamic Competitiveness in the Automotive and Electromechanical Industry

Abstract

This chapter analyses the dual functioning of the Mexican electromechanical sector between 1994 and 2008, separating globalized activities from those linked to the domestic market. An estimation of labour productivity in 52 industrial classes finds that structural heterogeneity increased particularly in the 1994–2001 subperiod, alongside technical and organizational improvements that were increasingly concentrated in a small number of subsidiary companies of transnational automotive-assembly enterprises. The application of the shift-share technique also revealed the absence of any significant structural change. Lastly, an extension of the methodology to evaluate competitiveness—developed by ECLAC—and its application to a second database that reclassifies 1345 foreign trade products, makes it possible to contrast these changes with the dynamism of the global production networks in which the leading firms of the sector in Mexico are engaged.