La industria manufacturera en Centroaméricaperspectivas de ajuste a la nueva política comercial regional

Résumé

The new trade policy in the Central American Common Market is given rise to changes in trade flows that will induce an inter-/intraindustry adjustment in the regional manufacturing sector. This article presents and analyses the main results of an empirical study which assessed the impact of the new integration scheme on each member country's pattern of trade and specialisation in manufactures. The empirical approach used in the study involved the construction of balance sheets integrating production and trade data on a comparable basis for each country's manufacturing sector. Likewise, two groups of ratios were obtained. They measured respectively, the relative importance of the regional and world market for the manufacturing subsectors of each country and the subsectoral potential for an inter-/intraindustry specialisation in the two markets.