Following Tulio Halperín Donghi's pioneering work, historians have tried to explain why Argentina experienced a dramatic export-led expansion in the first half of the nineteenth century despite a lack of price incentives. This paradox is resolved by a new estimate of Argentina's terms of trade. It suggests that they probably improved by at least 2,000 per cent from the 1780s to the first decade of the twentieth century, so there were considerable price incentives for export-led growth. Labour and capital moved into the export sector, bringing into production the country's Pampean land – a previously under-utilised resource. This suggests that Argentina's expansion in the long nineteenth century was less a result of internal factors than a response to globalisation.
An analysis of corporate profitability leads to a reevaluation of economic policy during Argentina’s Great Depression. While the overall profit rate collapsed, some sectors were more affected than others: Commerce, insurance, and agriculture were worst hit, followed by transportation, industry, and finally banking, which was a beneficiary of economic policy, especially the decision not to default on or renegotiate the external public debt. Had a different economic policy been pursued, it is likely that the international crisis would not have affected Argentina so severely. Most importantly, it would have been possible to further devalue the peso, which would have benefitted both agriculture and industry. Moreover, interest rates would have been lower, and continued government borrowing would not have crowded out investment in the private sector. An analysis of corporate profitability thus leads to a less positive view of economic policy during Argentina’s Great Depression than is often found in the existing literature.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.