Structural change and economic development

The paper examines analytical aspects of the link between structural change and the process of economic development, showing empirical evidence available in different countries of Latin America. The author analyses how the relative weight of different industrial branches changed to the interior of the industrial product of several Latin American countries, and, at the same time, presents two case studies that show the sector-specific character of the referred process. The paper concludes by analyzing public policies prone to favor both the entry of new firms with higher technological intensity and the insertion of new, knowledge-intensive, productive activities bent towards exports, in the pursuit of closing the income and productivity gap with the developed world.