• industrial dynamics
• policy evaluation
• sectoral size distribution
• technological gap

This thesis aims at evaluating the performance – at a meso and macroeconomic level – of the structural reforms that were massively introduced between the Eighties and the Nineties in the Latin American region. The theoretical framework we adopt is that of a Ricardian North-South model with a continuum of goods, where a special emphasis is given to the technological accumulation process as a determinant of one country’s specialization pattern. The empirical part presents evidence from both aggregate and sectoral data for five big countries of the region, with the purpose of analyzing the micro-macro linkages characterizing the shift toward the new policy regime. The results suggest that the exaggerated rise in the income elasticity of demand for imports can be regarded to as one of the main determinants of the reforms’ poor growth outcome, and point out the emergence across the region of two very distinct specialization patterns, whose nature and properties are extensively treated.