Mexico's export assembly industry has been the object of an intensely polarized debate. While some observers laud the maquiladora industry as a source of much-needed employment and foreign exchange for Mexico, others berate it as a vehicle for exploitation and pollution. Exports and Local Development attempts to transcend the dichotomy by taking a practical look at how this export industry could be better utilized to promote local development. Using data gathered from a field survey of more than seventy maquiladora plants, Patricia A. Wilson compares the Mexican industry with its more successful Asian counterparts to determine how policy initiatives might help Mexico use local linkages to tap the potential of both local and foreign-owned assembly plants. The study grounds its analysis of the maquiladora industry in leading-edge issues including the rise of free trade, changing corporate sourcing strategies, the competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing, the Japanese challenge, the spread of flexible technology and management methods, the impacts of export-led development strategies, the importance of business networking, and the role of small business. It will be of interest to a wide audience in international business, economic development planning, public policy, and economic geography.

In the late nineteenth century, Latin American exports boomed. From Chihuahua to Patagonia, producers sent industrial fibers, tropical fruits, and staple goods across oceans to satisfy the ever-increasing demand from foreign markets. In southern Mexico's Soconusco district, the coffee trade would transform rural life. A regional history of the Soconusco as well as a study in commodity capitalism, From the Grounds Up places indigenous and mestizo villagers, migrant workers, and local politicians at the center of our understanding of the export boom. An isolated, impoverished backwater for most of the nineteenth century, by 1920, the Soconusco had transformed into a small but vibrant node in the web of global commerce. Alongside plantation owners and foreign investors, a dense but little-explored web of small-time producers, shopowners, and laborers played key roles in the rapid expansion of export production. Their deep engagement with rural development challenges the standard top-down narrative of market integration led by economic elites allied with a strong state. Here, Casey Marina Lurtz argues that the export boom owed its success to a diverse body of players whose choices had profound impacts on Latin America's export-driven economy during the first era of globalization.

A comprehensive introduction to the economics of local economic development. The approach is people centered and recognizes contributions from other social sciences.