ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some of the debates empirically by looking at the impact of trade liberalisation on industrial pollution in the three major Latin American countries, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. Latin America provides a good arena to look at these issues because of the major shift in economic policy regime that took place in the region from the second half of the 1980s. The chapter provides a conceptual framework for analysing the various ways in which the changed insertion of the Latin American countries into the world economy has affected industrial pollution. The period since the mid-1980s has seen a major liberalisation of the Latin American economies. In Brazil change was less rapid than in Mexico or Argentina. The scale effects of liberalisation on industrial pollution will depend on whether or not it leads to a faster growth of production than would have been the case in the absence of reform.
