Argentine trade policies in the XX century: 60 years of solitude

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 exp...

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Detalhes bibliográficos
Autores: Brambilla, Irene, Galiani, Sebastian, Porto, Guido Gustavo
Formato: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2018
País:Argentina
Recursos:Universidad Nacional de La Plata
Repositorio:SEDICI (UNLP)
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:sedici.unlp.edu.ar:10915/124868
Acesso em linha:http://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/handle/10915/124868
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palavra-chave:Ciencias Económicas
Tariff protection
Export taxes on agriculture
Anti-export
Descrição
Resumo: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.