Argentina

Se analizan los efectos del comercio argentino con sus socios del Mercosur en dos períodos clave: antes (1997-1998) y después (2005-2006) de las crisis de sus economías. Para examinar la repercusión del comercio en la regionalización de las exportaciones e importaciones de los países miembros se utilizó el índice de orientación regional empleado por Yeats al estudiar estos países para otro período. Se concluye que los resultados alcanzados por Yeats se contradicen con la realidad posterior de Argentina y Brasil, a los que el Mercosur permitió, mediante procesos de aprendizaje, aumentar el comercio con países exteriores al bloque. Este efecto positivo se sintió principalmente en Brasil y no tanto en los demás miembros, especialmente Uruguay y Paraguay, debido a las asimetrías subyacentes entre las economías de estos países que determinaron que el país más grande sea el principal beneficiado de la integración hasta el presente.

En este artículo se examina cómo se presenta el derecho a la salud en el Primer Plan Nacional de Acción en Derechos Humanos (2017-2020), incorporando de manera efectiva un enfoque de derechos más allá de la dimensión enunciativa, para lo que la planificación requiere transformaciones conceptuales y metodológicas. A partir del estudio de la inclusión del derecho a la salud en dicha política pública, se entrecruzan dimensiones de análisis con elementos centrales del enfoque de derechos aplicado a la formulación de políticas públicas. Además, se reflexiona sobre las distancias entre el derecho a la salud cuando se presenta como un derecho social reconocido

En este trabajo se describen las recientes reformas previsionales en la Argentina y Chile. Con ellas se pretendió en los años ochenta y noventa mejorar la sostenibilidad fiscal de largo plazo y el diseño institucional de los sistemas, trasladando parte de los riesgos sociales y económicos desde el Estado a los participantes. En años recientes, las autoridades de ambos países coincidieron en identificar a la insuficiente cobertura entre los adultos mayores y al bajo nivel de los beneficios como los principales problemas de los sistemas previsionales vigentes. Debido a divergencias institucionales y políticas, las respuestas fueron dispares. En Chile, un proceso prolongado y participativo redundó en una amplia reforma concentrada en efectos a mediano plazo mediante ajustes cuidadosamente calibrados. En la Argentina, en cambio, las reformas involucraron un gran número de correcciones sucesivas, con poco debate público sobre sus implicancias y efectos en la cobertura y las necesidades fiscales.

This article makes an assessment of Argentina’s human resource skills in the field of information technology (IT). In various of the country’s government, business and academic domains the quality and potential of domestic human resources in this area is taken for granted- a belief based on the country’s rich, yet contradictory IT history, but not founded on an analysis of the corresponding skills. This study aims to develop and apply a methodology to evaluate the skills of IT workers and highlight their problems and potentials, using the results of an electronic survey. The current features and heterogeneity of those human resources are interpreted in the light of the progress and setbacks experienced by the activity during the course of its evolution.

This article analyses and compares the determinants of innovation in Argentina and Brazil, countries that have based their industrialization strategies on import substitution. Probit regressions in which instrumental variables are used to check for problems of endogeneity of exports reveal that, in both countries, knowledge external to firms helps to promote innovation, that internal research and development capacity is relatively weak and that external trade integration has a positive effect on firms’ propensity to innovate (more so in Brazil than in Argentina). The results of this study suggest in general that there has been modest progress in the pattern of innovation among Argentine and Brazilian firms in recent years compared with the import substitution period.

This article analyses developments in the labour market and income distribution in Argentina between 2002 and 2007, using data from the Permanent Household Survey and econometric estimates. Following the 2001 crisis the employment situation improved in the aggregate and there was initially a marked decline in income concentration. This reduction later tailed off, however, apparently because of differences in the opportunities for different types of households to reap the benefits of growth. Members of resource-poor households had less chance of finding work and faced disadvantages in terms of pay and labour market participation. The isolation and social homogeneity of the neighbourhoods in which these households were located appear to have influenced the distributive outcome.

The system of currency convertibility has shown that it is effective in overcoming inflation in Argentina, but its capacity for supporting a stable growth process and acting as a monetary and exchange-rate system which does not involve intervention and heavy costs on the part of the State is currently being questioned. The present article deals with this aspect on the basis of an analysis of the 1991-1995 period and identifies some key features of the functioning of the system: its reactions to movements of foreign capital; its interrelations with the domestic banking system; the extent to which it is capable of operating automatically without any need for a lender of last resort, as claimed in the theory on which it is based; and the degree to which the currency issued really has effective backing to ensure its convertibility.

The purpose of this article is to analyse the more salient features of the performance and evolution of foreign capital in the Argentine economy during the military government which was in power from 1976 to 1983. In the introduction, a brief summary of the long-term situation is given, with emphasis being placed on the fundamental role which foreign capital has played in the economic development of Argentina throughout its history. Section One contains a discussion of the evolution of foreign investments authorized to establish themselves in the country, special aspects of their capital contributions and their distribution by sector and country of origin and, finally, an analysis of those investments which were channelled to the financial sector and those which originated in the United States.

This article seeks to analyse the effects of globalization on the financial systems of Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, which were the countries that received most of the foreign investment in the region in the 1990s. This capital was mostly made up of portfolio flows and investments in shares traded on the local financial systems. The movement was not homogeneous in all the countries, because of their different degrees of openness and differences in macroeconomic policies. In the case of the portfolio investments, the effects of the openness were concentrated in different segments and they therefore had different impacts on the financial systems in question. The recent experience of these countries shows that there is still some room for national economic policies to take action in the context of financial globalization, even though their capacity to reduce the perverse effects of financial flows is limited. Foreign firms are observed to be assuming growing importance in the countries studied, as a function of the degree of openness of the local financial systems. This tendency is due to the liberalization measures adopted in order to make possible capitalization of the banking systems and competition among banks to find new sources of profits and strengthen their position in globalized markets. Although the predominance of foreign companies has given a more solid capital base to the national banking systems, it could have an adverse macro- economic impact, especially in Mexico and Brazil, which still maintain relatively independent monetary policies.