Abstract
This chapter uses new time series data to examine the industrialization in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Colombia since the early twentieth century. This allows the authors to uncover variation across countries and over time that the literature has overlooked. Rather than providing a single explanation of how specific shocks or policies shaped the industrialization of the region, their argument is that the timing of the industrial take-off was linked to initial conditions, while external shocks and macroeconomic and trade policy explain the variation in the rates of industrialization after the 1930s, and favourable terms of trade and liberalization explain de-industrialization after 1990.