info:eu-repo/semantics/article
Argentine trade policies in the XX century: 60 years of solitude
Fecha
2018-12Registro en:
Brambilla, María Irene; Galiani, Sebastian; Porto, Guido Gustavo; Argentine trade policies in the XX century: 60 years of solitude; Springer; Latin American Economic Review; 27; 1; 12-2018; 1-30
2196-436X
CONICET Digital
CONICET
Autor
Brambilla, María Irene
Galiani, Sebastian
Porto, Guido Gustavo
Resumen
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.