Notes and Comments Notes on the Concept of Import Substitution

By these rules, “import substitution” should be paid extra since it has been used to mean many different things. These notes are intended, therefore, to clarify or at least specify some of the issues and ambiguities surrounding discussion of import substitution in the hope that future research and policy can thereby be more efficiently directed and these sometimes muddied issues can thereby be more clearly understood. Since its objective is to point up sources of conceptual confu¬sion that have appeared in import substitution studies and policies, distinctions will be drawn sometimes too sharply where this is useful, even at the risk of over¬simplifying a complicated problem. Finally, it should be clear from the outset that the paper makes no pretence at major originality.