Argentine trade policies in the XX century: 60 years of solitude
Abstract At the turn of the last century, the Argentine economy was on a path to prosperity that never fully developed. International trade and trade policies are often identified as a major culprit. In this paper, we review the history of Argentine trade policy to uncover its exceptional features a...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
2018-02-01
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| Series: | Latin American Economic Review |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40503-017-0050-9 |
| Summary: | Abstract At the turn of the last century, the Argentine economy was on a path to prosperity that never fully developed. International trade and trade policies are often identified as a major culprit. In this paper, we review the history of Argentine trade policy to uncover its exceptional features and to explore its contribution to the Argentine debacle. Our analysis tells a story of bad trade policies, rooted in distributional conflict and shaped by changes in constraints, that favored industry over agriculture in a country with a fundamental comparative advantage in agriculture. While the anti-export bias impeded productivity growth in agriculture, the import substitution strategy was not successful in promoting an efficient industrialization. In the end, Argentine growth never took-off. |
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| ISSN: | 2198-3526 2196-436X |