Argentina: A Case Study on the Plan Jefes y Jefas de Hogar Desocupados, or the Employment Road to Economic Recovery

After the 2001 crisis, Argentinaonce the poster-child for pro-market structural-adjustment policieshad to define a new strategy in order to manage the societal demands that had led to the fall of the previous administration. The demand by the majority of the population for employment recovery spurred the government to introduce a massive employment program, the Plan Jefes y Jefas de Hogar Desocupados (Program for Unemployed Male and Female Heads of Households). This program, which accounted for less than 1 percent of GDP at the outset, paved the way for a reduction of the contractionary effects that otherwise would have caused a catastrophic devaluation of the currency. This paper explores how Argentina pursued a strategy of employment generation, with the state participating as employer of last resort, to recover from one of the worst social and economic crises in its history

The Political Economy of Fiscal Reform in Latin America: The Case of Argentina

This paper investigates the political economy of fiscal reform activism in Argentina since the late 1980s. Between 1988 and 2008, tax legislation was changed 83 times, fiscal federal rules 14 times, and budgetary institutions sixteen times. Tax and budgetary reforms moved from centralizing revenue sources and spending authority in the federal government to mild decentralization lately. Fiscal federal rules combined centralization of revenues and management in the federal government with short-term compensations for the provinces. This paper contends that reform activism can be explained by the recurrence of economic and policy shocks while reform patterns may be accounted for as consequences of the decreasing political integration of national parties in a polity whose decisionmaking rules encourage the formation of oversized coalitions. The decrease in political integration weakened the national party leaderships ability to coordinate intergovernmental bargaining, and strengthened the local bosses and factions needed to form oversized coalitions