The natural resource curse and financial development of Mexico 1

Decades of literature have explored the idiosyncratic challenges of exportled economic growth, especially in the case of relative wealth and the exports of commodities, which remains a central theme for Latin American countries. The economic, social and political effects of such international specialisation have been studied from different analytical perspectives by development economists, at least since the Great Depression and the end of World War II, using different versions of the unequal development, unequal exchange and the dependency schools. The theoretical issue that affects models such as Heckscher-Ohlin’s, or the implications from Ricardo’s and other relevant contributions, is as follows: Does free trade or export-led growth benet all trading countries in the same manner?