What Happened to Argentina? NY Times
(*) A century ago, there were only seven countries in the world that were more prosperous than Argentina (Belgium, Switzerland, Britain and four former English colonies including the United States), according to Angus Maddison’s historic income database.
In 1909, per capita income in Argentina was 50% higher than in Italy, 180% higher than Japan, and almost five times higher than in neighbouring Brazil. Over the course of the 20th century, Argentina’s relative standing in world incomes fell sharply. By 2000, Argentina’s income was less than half that of Italy or Japan.
The chart below shows the relationship between income in 1909 and income in 2000 in 1990 dollars, and Argentina is the extreme outlier. The gap between 2000 income and predicted economic success, based on 1909 income, is larger for Argentina than for any other country. Why did that once-wealthy nation do so poorly?
In its pre-World War I heyday, Argentina thrived as a trading giant shipping beef and grain abroad. After World War II, formerly poor countries including Japan, Korea and Italy followed an export-led model to wealth. A combination of external shocks (two world wars and the Great Depression) and protectionism caused Argentina to turn inward.
Peronism was not only protectionist, but it also favoured large state enterprises and significant regulation of the economy. Neither strategy has been particularly good for growth. Argentina’s inbred banking system has historically had trouble weathering severe shocks. Decades of political instability have made property rights insecure and investment unattractive.
Argentina was cursed with bad policies that bear much of the blame for the country’s problems, but why was Argentina’s public sector so problematic?
Those bad policies weren’t just bad luck. To understand Argentina’s political problems during the 20th century, we must look back to the Belle Epoque, and try to understand why, despite its wealth, Argentina was different from other wealthy countries, like the United States.
In a recent paper, Felipe Campante and I have taken an urban perspective on Argentine exceptionalism and compared Buenos Aires and Chicago in 1900.
In many ways, the two cities are strikingly similar. Chicago grew great in the 19th century as a conduit for the agricultural wealth of the US hinterland. In 1816, it cost as much to move goods 32 miles over land as to ship across the Atlantic. The enormous costs of shipping by land caused the US population to perch on the Eastern Seaboard, dependent on an Atlantic lifeline. Over the 1800s, a great transportation network of canals and rails makes the US rich farmland accessible. Cities like Chicago grew as the nodes of that network.
Chicago’s fortune is made by two canals, the Erie Canal and the Illinois and Michigan Canal, which turned Chicago into the linchpin on a great watery arc that runs from New York to New Orleans. Railroads complemented the waterways and enable the rich farmland of Iowa to ships its corn, in porcine form, to eastern markets via Chicago. Chicago’s most famous 19th century industry was its stockyards, which thrived because of refrigerated rail cars that shipped slaughtered beef back east. Clothing employed even more Chicagoans, who were making garments for thousands of rural customers, supplied by Marshall Field, Montgomery Ward and Sears, Roebuck.
The story of Buenos Aires is broadly similar. Like Chicago, the city was surrounded by a vast, fertile hinterland. Buenos Aires grows as a centre for transporting agricultural products east. The frigorificos, refrigerated ships, greatly increased its ability to ship beef. Clothing was also Buenos Aires’s largest industry.
But there were also major dissimilarities between the two places.
Chicago was substantially wealthier, even a century ago. Capital per worker was more than twice higher in the Windy City. Chicago was a seedbed of technological innovations, including the skyscraper, the zipper and the electric washing machine. Buenos Aires’s entrepreneurs, such as the industrious Torcuato DiTella, often succeeded by importing American technologies, as DiTella did with gas pumps and refrigerators.
The greater levels of technological innovation in Chicago probably reflect the higher levels of education in the United States. Throughout the 19th century, Chicago was almost completely literate, because the rural migrants who came to the city had been well educated in the common schools that dotted America’s farmland. By contrast, more than a fifth of Buenos Aires’s population was illiterate until 1900, reflecting the far lower levels of education in rural Argentina.
As the next figure shows, no variable from 1900 better explains success in 2000 than investment in education.
Schooling is measured by the share of the relevant populations that was enrolled in primary, secondary or tertiary schooling. Argentina may have been rich, but it was not that well-educated. In 2000, Argentina was doing about as well as would be expected based on its education levels in 1900. Long-run national success is built on human capital, both because of the link between schooling and technology and because of the link between education and the well-functioning demnocracy.
I will return to this link, and to the puzzle of Argentine exceptionalism, in a future post.
(*) Edward L. Glaeser is an economics professor at Harvard.
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I'm from Argentina, I'm 26 and I've been living in New Zealand for 2 years now. The difference between the kiwi and argentine psique is amazingly different! The main problem that ARG faces is people's mentality. We are a rich country and money shouldn't be an issue at all. Being outside my country made me realize that the way in which we perceive reality is totally incorrect. We tend to blame politicians for all of our problems but is not them, is ALL OF US. The argentine (specially the porteno, people from BA) don't respect anything and always think that they are smarter than the rest of the world.
You should go to ARG for a few months and interact with portenos and you will understand the country's economical situation. Porteno is the exacerbated version of a typical argentine. I study cinema and I'm planning to do a short film about the ''argentine psique'', it makes me sad to see that my country is so blind, I don't intend to change people's mentality but I feel that I have to do something and at least TRY to create an impact on the people that watches the movie.
Cheers!
Roman
I agree with you and I 'd like to add, that we blame politicians just because what we point on them, is just what we dislike of ourselves.
Good luck with your movie, and I hope to see it in our country and that it really helps to make think about the situation.
Regards,
Mandy.-
I think that the case of Argentine is a symbol of the Latin American situation, because our contintent is plenty of natural resources but we are failing managing the most important one:human resources. If you think about the reason why the Asian economies have reached so impressive development, you will realize that they have invested in the education of their population. While our ruling classes don't understand this, Latin America will continue being a continent of lost opportunities.
Thanks.
To rely mostly on agriculture, the country subjects itself to external factors that could be devastating to its economy… i.e. demand, price, market availability not to mention that it all depends on trickle down economics since most of the resources belong to only a handful of people and they tend to spend their gains abroad... which is illustrated in the article
I agree with you that there has to be a national economic policy that balances the elements of economic production (natural resources, manufactured goods, services etc) so when demand for one diminishes the others can fill in the gap, and it should include education, a robust legal system and social safety nets.
Weather the country can provide opportunities, welfare, safety, etc to its citizens is the real measure of a country’s prosperity… but I do not see that happening in Brazil nor in Chile now that they are going thru such economic success.
Thanks.
Best regards.
Luis Spallarossa
The US has never dictated who the UK can trade with.
The true fact is Argentina has caused it's own demise through corruption and mismanagement.
Canada was one of the countries that benefited since goods purchased with aid money were from there (as per the US). Which is one of the reasons Canada does so well economically (the proximity to the US also helps and its people also deserve credit)
One last point; Argentina's demise???... The country is not doing great, true, but is far from “demise” compared to other countries.
Thanks.
Argentina is not doing great and the current policies will only make that worse, export taxes have driven exports down, pensions have been purloined and inflation figures massaged.
But as usual when chickens come home to roost, malign foreign influences will be to blame.
Perhaps demise was a poor choice of word, Argentina is still there, true, but a shadow of what is was in the past. I'll use “descent” instead.
There is precious little evidence that the US has dictated to the UK (directly or indirectly) who they could trade with (before, during and since the 2nd World War).
There is however bags of evidence that Argentina has descended from a global economic heavyweight to something teetering on the edge of a third-world country due to mismanagement and corruption.
I think Justin is correct to date the start of all this from the time of Peron, but don't forget there had been defaults and crises before that.
abrazo tu tocallo
Todos ustedes estan en crisis porque yo me robe la plata !!!
Saludos desde mi nueva laptop, un besito, Nestor
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