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.

This article examines a number of ideas about local innovation systems, how best they can be studied and what needs to be done to develop them further. It is based on experiences in Latin America generally and Argentina in particular. The first part briefly reviews the literature on local production and innovation systems. Following this, 10 hypotheses about the workings of innovation systems are presented, together with the same number of approaches to studying the characteristics and potential of any specific existing system. The third part sets out a number of measures that could be applied to improve local innovation systems in a given country or region. This paper argues that it is both possible and necessary to build bridges between analysis and action, theory and practice.

The central focus of this article is on the role played by transnational corporations in the industrial realignment of Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico between the end of the import substitution stage and the early 1990s. Based on recently published studies dealing with the sweeping changes occurring in Latin America’s manufacturing sector following the region’s economic crisis and liberalization process, a computer programme developed by the ECLAC Division of Production, Productivity and Management has been used to examine the changes that have taken place in the sector’s production structure (sectoral composition and efficiency) and its linkages with the global economy.

This article looks at the strengths and weaknesses of the policies proposed in the Argentine National Multi-year Science and Technology Plan, 1998-2000, within the conceptual framework of the National Innovation System (NIS) approach. In the light of a severe diagnosis of the weaknesses of Argentine efforts in this field, the new public policies are designed to promote the interaction of the many agents and institutions involved in those efforts, to change the rules governing the allocation of public resources to research, to promote strategic plans and evaluation mechanisms in public bodies in this field, and to induce greater voluntary spending by the private sector through fiscal credits for technological research and development and a Technological Advisers Programme, in order to give better attention to the demands of small and medium-sized enterprises. However, there are very profound and severe shortcomings in the ability of the Argentine financial system to provide finance for longterm investments in intangible assets, in the capacity of the educational system to link up with the needs of the production sector, and in the ability of the scientific institutions to interact with the educational system and the production sector. Although these shortcomings are mentioned in the Plan, they are not given the amount of attention needed to begin to reverse them. The long and frustrating past history of science and technology policies in the country, which have registered more failures than successes, and the partial success of the laissez-faire policy applied in the 1990s, which was considered to be a good policy by most of domestic and foreign big business, militate against the success of the initiatives under way. At the same time, and in spite of its stimulating suggestions, the approach taken by the NIS reflects serious ambiguities in its normative and conceptual aspects which limit its practical applicability.

From a multidimensional and dynamic approach, this article focuses on the linkages between labour, unemployment, poverty and inequality, examining the forms which social precarity has adopted in Mexico and Argentina in the new economic environment. It contends that the weakening of employment-based integration mechanisms, marked inequalities in access to opportunities and increasingly rigid social structures are evidence of strong exclusionary trends, which exhibit specific characteristics in each country. After analysing national trajectories and the levels of integration achieved under the importsubstitution industrialization model, the article examines the deterioration of working and living conditions witnessed over the last few decades. It concludes with a discussion of some of the dilemmas and challenges which the transition towards more equitable, socially supportive and inclusive societies poses in terms of research and public policy.

Bajo un marco teórico evolucionista, se estudia la repercusión de las capacidades organizacionales y de absorción y de las vinculaciones en el desempeño de firmas argentinas de software y servicios informáticos. Los modelos estimados denotan que los resultados de innovación dependen de la gestión de calidad, de la existencia de equipos de investigación y desarrollo (I+D) y de posiciones intermedias en la red de vinculaciones. El desempeño económico no puede abordarse sobre la base de un mismo conjunto de indicadores. Mientras que la productividad se explica por la calificación de los recursos humanos y el crecimiento del empleo por la presencia de equipos de I+D, la probabilidad de exportar se relaciona con disponer de certificaciones, adoptar metodologías ágiles y ocupar posiciones intermedias en la red. La heterogeneidad en los modelos de negocios sugiere que no es posible establecer una relación única entre innovación y desempeño para el conjunto de firmas.

En este trabajo se analiza la relación entre innovación y generación de empleo en la empresa. En particular, se buscan datos sobre el papel que desempeñó la innovación durante la última fase de expansión del empleo manufacturero en la Argentina (2010-2012). Se utiliza el modelo propuesto por Harrison y otros (2014), con un enfoque de variables instrumentales y sobre la base de la Encuesta Nacional de Dinámica del Empleo y la Innovación (ENDEI), recientemente finalizada. Los resultados muestran que las innovaciones de proceso no influyen en el crecimiento del empleo, que resulta positivamente afectado por las innovaciones de producto. Estas últimas también permiten lograr un aumento de los niveles de eficiencia de la producción por encima de los que se obtienen con los productos existentes. En lo que se refiere a composición del empleo en términos de calificación, se observa que la innovación de producto no presenta un sesgo específico.

Este artículo es la pequeña, pero crucial historia de un régimen cambiario-monetario en tránsito durante cuatro años, que culminó en 1933 con la desaparición definitiva del patrón oro en la Argentina. Ese proceso se caracterizó por decisiones tomadas en coyunturas críticas frente a las cuales las autoridades de gobierno no podían andar pausadamente, ante las cuales no tenían un arsenal analítico, ni certezas técnicas, ni convicciones políticas. El objetivo de este estudio es analizar esas “decisiones” a lo largo de siete hitos, siendo el primero el shock externo de 1929 y el último el envío al Congreso de una ley para la creación del banco central y un régimen de control de cambios caracterizado por tipos de cambio múltiples. El nuevo régimen implícito en ese reordenamiento de la economía argentina habría de perdurar, con sus idas y venidas, por al menos un cuarto de siglo.

This article analyses the adoption of genetically modified cotton by small-scale farmers in the Chaco region of Argentina. It uses the socio-technical configuration of the technology as a conceptual framework, which postulates the existence of a set of factors that significantly affect the way in which technologies operate. Based on this framework, the article describes the conditions under which small-scale farmers in the Chaco region adopt gm cotton; and it identifies the differences between them and large-scale farmers, on which most of the literature focuses. Qualitative methodologies are used to analyse the breaks and continuities in productive practices affecting the profitability of small-scale farmers since the introduction of gm cotton. It is found that the productive difficulties they face have remained essentially unchanged, and, in some cases, have become more accentuated.

This study analyses how far the strong expansion of Argentine exports since 2003 has been due simply to favourable external conditions and how industrial manufactures have behaved. It finds that the country’s pattern of international specialization has not greatly altered at the major category level, but that both primary products and manufactures of agricultural origin, which account for much of the trade surplus, have undergone significant changes in composition. In addition, regional trade has consolidated and traditional partners such as the European Union and the United States have been displaced to some extent by China. Industrial manufactures have continued to suffer from a strong comparative disadvantage, but certain high-technology industrial sectors, such as agricultural machinery and pumps and compressors, have started to become competitive, while seamless oil and gas tubing is already highly competitive.

The objective of this study is to analyse the determinants of the quality of education in Argentina and, in particular, to look at what influence a school’s ownership structure has. A multilevel regression model and 2006 data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (pisa) were used for this purpose. One of the main findings is that the correlation between a school’s administrative structure (public or private) and its students’ scholastic performance fades when the socioeconomic school environment is taken into consideration.

This study analyses the determinants of firm dynamics in developing countries, using Argentina as an illustrative case. It explains firm entry and exit at the regional level, distinguishing three groups of manufacturing activities: low-, medium- and high-tech. The study finds that both region- and sector- specific determinants explain firm dynamics, but the impact is not homogeneous across sectors. In particular, for low-tech industries, there is a need for explanatory variables as a proxy for the specificities of developing economies (poverty, informal economy and idle capacity). There is also evidence of a core-periphery pattern according to which agglomeration economies and previous entries/exits have different effects in core and peripheral regions. These results are relevant for policymakers in developing countries, who should take into account not only the specificities of such economies, but also the regional heterogeneity both in terms of the level of development and industrial composition within the country.

The Argentine economy has been becoming greener because of a new political orientation, international commitments (the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development) and private sector initiatives. This transition is having economic and social impacts. The aim of the present article is to determine the potential of the economy to create green jobs that protect workers and the environment. In 2015, 7% of formal jobs were green and presented better average employment conditions than the rest. They were predominantly in goods production and the provision of urban services, such as sanitation and transport. Regulations and public policies seem to be the main factors driving green job creation, with consumption still playing a minor role. For the transition to a green economy to be fair, policies must take account of the employment dimension in order to initiate a virtuous circle leading to a more productive, inclusive and environmentally friendly economy.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the gender dimension into the analysis of tax incidence in Argentina. To that end, the impact of direct and indirect taxes on income and distribution by gender is calculated to establish the progressivity of taxes and the effects on gender equity when household classifications are analysed. The findings show that while the tax system is moderately progressive and the heaviest burden falls on households with male breadwinners, differences emerge when the impact of indirect and direct taxes is considered separately. The indirect tax system is heavily regressive and female-breadwinner households bear the largest burden, since they are concentrated in the lower income brackets. Households with children bear the highest direct tax burden, particularly male-breadwinner and dual-earner households.

This article describes the most recent pension reforms in Argentina and Chile. The previous reforms, implemented in the 1980s and 1990s, aimed to improve long-term fiscal sustainability and institutional design of the systems, shifting part of the social and economic risks away from the State and on to participants. In recent years, the authorities in both countries identified the main problems facing current pension systems as inadequate coverage for older adults and the low level of benefits. The two countries have responded differently, however, owing to institutional and political divergences. In Chile, a lengthy participatory process resulted in a wide-ranging reform targeting medium-term effects through carefully calibrated adjustments. In contrast, the reforms in Argentina were made through a succession of corrections, with little public discussion of their implications or effects on coverage and fiscal needs.