Argentine Trade Policies in the XX Century: 60 Years of Solitude

45 Pages Posted: 22 Sep 2010

See all articles by Irene Brambilla

Irene Brambilla

Universidad Nacional de La Plata

Sebastian Galiani

University of Maryland - Department of Economics

Guido G. Porto

Universidad Nacional de La Plata - Faculty of Economics

Date Written: September 21, 2010

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 .

Keywords: tariff s, export taxes to agriculture, La Rural Argentina

JEL Classification: F13, F14

Suggested Citation

Brambilla, Irene and Galiani, Sebastian and Porto, Guido G., Argentine Trade Policies in the XX Century: 60 Years of Solitude (September 21, 2010). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1680606 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1680606

Irene Brambilla

Universidad Nacional de La Plata ( email )

La Plata, Buenos Aires 1900
Argentina

Sebastian Galiani (Contact Author)

University of Maryland - Department of Economics ( email )

College Park, MD 20742
United States

Guido G. Porto

Universidad Nacional de La Plata - Faculty of Economics ( email )

1900 La Plata
Argentina

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