Abstracts of Papers Presented at the Annual Metting
研究了墨西哥钢铁厂Fundidora Monterrey的生产率与成本，发现其效率接近英美同行，高成本源于焦煤价格，但随本土生产与工业化推进，国际竞争力逐步提升。
This paper examines the case of "Fundidora Monterrey," an integrated iron and steel mill that appeared in Mexico in 1900, forty years earlier than any of its Latin American counterparts. It looks at causes of retardation in Latin America, comparing the mill's performance internationally. It finds out that Fundidora had a total factor productivity similar to that of the British iron and steel industry in those years and was only 3 percent to 4 percent less efficient than the German and the American industries. Fundidora's labor and capital intensities were also similar to those of the British industry. Excess capacity was not a structural problem but a variable over which entrepreneurs had some control and one that was diminishing through time. There was sufficient demand in Mexico for it to be utilized fully given the explicit import-substitution policy the government undertook. Fundidora production costs were higher than those of its foreign competitors mainly due to the high costs of coke and coal it faced, which showed a downward trend as these inputs began to be produced in Mexico and as its markets developed as part of the industrialization spurt. Fundidora appeared by 1910 as increasingly able to compete internationally.