Import substitution industrialization (ISI) is a protectionist trade and economic policy that advocates replacing foreign imports with domestic production. It is based on the premise that a country should attempt to reduce its foreign dependency through the local production of industrialized products. The term primarily refers to 20th-century development economics policies, but it has been advocated since the 18th century by economists such as Friedrich List and Alexander Hamilton. ISI policies have been enacted by developing countries with the intention of producing development and self-sufficiency by the creation of an internal market. The state leads economic development by nationalization, subsidization of manufacturing, increased taxation, and highly protectionist trade policies. In the context of Latin American development, the term "Latin American structuralism" refers to the era of import substitution industrialization in many Latin American countries from the 1950s to the 1980s. The theories behind Latin American structuralism and ISI were organized in the works of economists such as Raúl Prebisch, Hans Singer, and Celso Furtado, and gained prominence with the creation of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (UNECLAC or CEPAL). They were influenced by a wide range of Keynesian, communitarian, and socialist economic thought, as well as dependency theory. By the mid-1960s, many of the economists who had previously advocated for ISI in developing countries grew disenchanted with the policy and its outcomes. Many of the countries that adopted ISI policies in the post-WWII years had abandoned ISI by the late 1980s, reducing government intervention in the economy and becoming active participants in the World Trade Organization. In contrast to ISI policies, the Four Asian Tigers (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan) have been characterized as government intervention to facilitate "export-oriented industrialization". ISI policies generally had large distributional consequences, as the incomes of export-oriented sectors (such as agriculture) declined while the incomes of import-competing sectors (such as manufacturing) increased. Governments that adopted ISI policies ran persistent budget deficits as state-owned enterprises never became profitable. They also ran current accounts deficits, as the manufactured goods produced by ISI countries were not competitive in international markets, and as the agricultural sector (the sector which was competitive in international markets) was weakened; as a result, ISI countries ended up importing more. ISI policies were also plagued by rent-seeking.
History
ISI is a development theory, but its political implementation and theoretical rationale are rooted in trade theory. It has been argued that all or virtually all nations that have industrialized have followed ISI. Import substitution was heavily practiced during the mid-20th century as a form of developmental theory that advocated increased productivity and economic gains within a country. It was an inward-looking economic theory practiced by developing nations after World War II. Many economists then considered the ISI approach as a remedy to mass poverty by bringing a developing country to a developed status through national industrialization. Mass poverty is defined as "the dominance of agricultural and mineral activities – in the low-income countries, and in their inability, because of their structure, to profit from international trade." Mercantilist economic theory and practices of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries frequently advocated building up domestic manufacturing and import substitution. In the early United States, the Hamiltonian economic program, specifically the third report and the magnum opus of Alexander Hamilton, the Report on Manufactures, advocated for the U.S. to become self-sufficient in manufactured goods. That formed the basis of the American School in economics, which was an influential force in the country during its 19th-century industrialization. Werner Baer contends that all countries that have industrialized after the United Kingdom have gone through a stage of ISI in which much investment in industry was directed to replace imports. Going further, in his book Kicking Away the Ladder, the South Korean economist Ha-Joon Chang also argues based on economic history that all major developed countries, including the United Kingdom, used interventionist economic policies to promote industrialization and protected national companies until they had reached a level of development in which they were able to compete in the global market. Those countries adopted free market discourses directed at other countries to obtain two objectives: to open their markets to local products and to prevent them from adopting the same development strategies that had led to the industrialization of the developed countries.
Theoretical basis As a set of development policies, ISI policies are theoretically grounded on the Prebisch–Singer thesis, on the infant industry argument, and on Keynesian economics. The associated practices are commonly:
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