Globalisation, the Terms of Trade, and Argentina's Expansion in the Long Nineteenth Century

Abstract

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.

Las asimetrías del desempeño económico en América Latina y Asia Oriental: un análisis comparativo

“…Casi todas las economías de la región crecieron al ritmo de la incorporación de los nuevos territorios a la producción orientada al exterior. Para la región, en términos macroeconómicos, estas transformaciones coincidieron con una mejora notable de los términos de intercambio de las materias primas y alimentos en perjuicio de las manufacturas (Francis, 2013). Dicha tendencia favoreció la inserción de estas economías por medio de la exportación de productos primarios al costo de eliminar las rudimentarias manufacturas y artesanías preexistentes en la región.…”

Will China Avoid the Middle-Income Trap?

“…Table 2 shows that Argentina had a declining textile industry at the end of the 19 th century. Soaring prices of agricultural goods led to booms in exporting agricultural goods and Argentina had deindustrialization during the glory days (Francis, 2014). Argentina is not a "melting pot" for waves of immigrants (Brown, 2011).…”

“…Benefits of economic development should be shared by everyone and high inequality is inconsistent with traditional Chinese thoughts such as Confucianism which advocates an equal-access society. High income inequality can lead to negative consequences.First, in Argentina it might have harmed Argentina's adoption of labor-saving technologies(Francis, 2014). A divided society will make the development of the manufacturing sector more difficult.…”

The Other Side of Argentine Foreign Trade: Sources for the Study of Imports, 1880-1913

“…As part of the revalorisation of commercial statistics, a previously absent concern emerged: the reconstruction of foreign trade values in order to have more reliable data, for example, in Uruguay (Baptista and Bértola 1999;Bonino-Gayoso et al 2015), in México (Kuntz-Ficker 2007 or in Argentina (Tena-Junguito and Willebald 2013;Bonino-Gayoso et al 2015;Rayes 2015a;Francis 2017).…”