This edited volume examines Japan's increasing links with Latin America from three perspectives. First, the introduction looks at the US role in `mediating' Japan's relations with Latin America. Second, three chapters by Japanese scholars offer their perspectives on the economic, political and cultural links between their country and the Latin American region. Finally, scholars from five Latin American countries - Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Chile and Panama - trace historical, current and future ties between Japan and their respective nations.
U.S.—Japanese Economic Relations: Cooperation, Competition, and Confrontation provides a comprehensive review of the patterns of U.S.-Japanese interaction. This book describes the tension in the economic sphere that frayed the whole system of connections between U.S. and Japan, including various factors that contribute to these tensions. The ways on how to to reverse the process of estrangement that can lead both nations out of the atmosphere of confrontation and back into one of healthy competition and cooperation is also elaborated. This text also discusses Japan and the United States' possible developments of policies in pursuit of a rapprochement. This publication is a good reference for students and individuals researching on the sources of confrontation, competition, and cooperation in U.S.-Japanese relations.
Mexico's petroleum industry has come to symbolize the very sovereignty of the nation itself. Politicians criticize Pemex, the national oil company, at their peril, and President Salinas de Gortari has made clear that the free trade negotiations between Mexico and the United States will not affect Pemex's basic status as a public enterprise. How and why did the petroleum industry gain such prominence and, some might say, immunity within Mexico's political economy? The Mexican Petroleum Industry in the Twentieth Century, edited by Jonathan C. Brown and Alan Knight, seeks to explain the impact of the oil sector on the nation's economic, political, and social development. The book is a multinational effort—one author is Australian, two British, three North American, and five Mexican. Each contributing scholar has researched and written extensively about Mexico and its oil industry.
This work follows upon the author's previous volume, The Political Economy of Venezuelan Oil, and investigates the general workings of the Mexican oil industry in relationship to the economics and politics of Mexico. Specifically the author examines Mexico's state-run oil concern, PEMEX, and the costs and benefits of Mexican oil policy--for the nation as a whole and for special groups. Using in-depth interviews and extensive data from PEMEX and other sources, Randall explores issues such as PEMEX's relationships with workers and the oil union, with suppliers of capital goods and services, with the regions in which oil is produced, and with specific groups of oil consumers. Given the critical and negative publicity PEMEX has received over its lifetime, Randall also seeks to answer questions regarding the extent of corruption, overstaffing, and lax management within PEMEX, which she finds to be less than is often alleged. Students of energy and development economics will find Randall's study an important contribution to the literature of Latin American economic policy. In addition to examining the internal workings of PEMEX, Randall describes and analyzes measures taken to correct earlier abuses and to increase efficiency. She reveals the intricate relationships among Mexican oil production, OPEC, the United States, and other nations, and explores the contradictory aspects of Mexican economic and oil policies that inhibit the ability of the oil industry to reach official goals. Throughout, Randall traces the transformation of PEMEX from a nationalized industry that mainly produced crude oil for export to one that has expanded to include refined products and petrochemicals. As a result of this expansion, Randall demonstrates, PEMEX has had a major impact both on the market for labor and capital goods and on the regions in which it operates. Her conclusions regarding the current and future prospects for PEMEX have important implications for the study of economic and energy development throughout the Third World.
