Argentina

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.