Did the debt crisis or declining oil prices cause Mexicos investment collapse?
Author InfoWarner, Andrew M. Abstract The author proposes and estimates a microeconomic investment model to determine the relative importance of three explanations for Mexico’s investment decline in the early 1980s: the decline in oil prices; the termination of capital inflows; and the effects of debt overhang and uncertainty. He uses investment data for private industries between 1981 and 1985, which have yet to be used in addressing the question under discussion. The data indicate that the main microeconomic mechanism driving the decline in investment was a rise in the relative price of investment goods – especially the relative price of machinery (a traded good in Mexico). Moreover, the decline in trade (driven by falling world oil prices) explains much of the increase in this relative price. The decline in Mexico’s international terms of trade was probably the most important ultimate cause of the increased relative cost of machinery, but the reversal in net capital inflows to Mexic
