Earnings Mobility in Times of Growth and Decline: Argentina from 1996 to 2003

In recent years, the economy of Argentina has experienced both rapid economic growth and severe economic decline. In this paper, we use a series of one-year long panels to study who gained the most in pesos when the economy grew and who lost the most in pesos when the economy contracted. Various considerations led us to expect that mobility would be divergent—that is, that the individuals who started with the highest initial earnings would enjoy the largest earnings gains in pesos. Contrary to expectations and for a wide range of specifications, mobility is found to be mostly convergent, sometimes neutral, and never divergent. We then demonstrate how generally rising inequality and convergent mobility can be reconciled. Thus, the panel data analysis performed in this paper presents a picture of economic growth that is much more pro-poor than what one gets from cross-sectional inequality comparisons

How Is Convergent Mobility Consistent with Rising Inequality? A Reconciliation in the Case of Argentina

[Excerpt] This is a paper on earnings mobility in Argentina during the macroeconomic growth and contractions that have characterized that nation’s economy from 1996 to the present. Since 1996, real GDP growth has fluctuated widely. For most of the 1990s, Argentina was seen as a model of successful policymaking. Having pegged its exchange rate to the dollar under a currency board type arrangement in 1991, Argentina had succeeded in ending hyperinflation, reducing inflation rates to single-digit levels. Greater economic stability attracted foreign investment inflows, contributing to an acceleration in economic growth; indeed, even as lenders withdrew their financing in East Asia in 1997, capital inflows continued to Argentina. Then, Argentina entered into a prolonged recession. The combination of the hard peg of the local currency to the U.S. dollar and excessive borrowing led to an unsustainable fiscal situation and, ultimately, to the collapse of the economy at the end of 2001 (See Figure 1). Gross Domestic Product fell by 13.5 percent from the second quarter of 2001 to the second quarter of 2002, and the share of the population in poverty reached 58 percent in October 2002, versus 38 percent in October 2001, according to the official moderate poverty line. This paper addresses the distributional consequences of these macroeconomic events. (Note: Here and throughout the paper, “distribution of income” means the entire density or cumulative distribution function; it does not mean “inequality.”) Who benefited the most from Argentine economic growth? Who lost the most in economic decline? Are those who started rich getting richer in growth periods and losing more in recessionary periods, or is it the other way around? Are the answers to these questions the same for all measures of initial advantage

On the geometry of the set of controllability subspaces of a pair (A,B)

AbstractGiven a controllable system defined by a pair of matrices (A,B), we investigate the geometry of the set of controllability subspaces. This set is a subset of the set of (A,B)-invariant subspaces. We prove that, in fact, it is a stratified submanifold and we compute its dimension

Propuesta de Diseño de Rutas Turístico-Culturales mediante el Empleo de SIG: Un Caso Aplicado

Cultural tourism routes and itineraries are tourism promotion tools that have under-gone a remarkable development in recent years, thanks to their ability to enhance the value of cultural heritage. In this sense, national and international organizations as well as private initiatives have designed tourist routes that cover a wide range of topics, while cultural itineraries have been recognized at the institutional level by organizations such as ICOMOS or the Council of Europe. The main objective of this article is to offer a proposal for the design of cultural tourist routes through the use of a geographic information system. To achieve this goal, we start from a brief theoretical framework in which the tourist use of geographic information systems and the conceptualization of tourist routes and their differences with itineraries are analyzed. Subsequently, the methodology used consists of two distinct phases. Initially, a quantitative study is carried out in which data on the late medieval heritage are collected and subsequently, through the use of a GIS, an index of tourist potentiality is carried out and the creation of a tourist route in the province of Cadiz (Spain). In this way the results obtained justify the route designed and the choice of municipalities, based on their greater availability of tourism resources (accessibility, hospitality etc.) and cultural (historical assets

On the perturbation of bimodal systems

Given a bimodal system de¯ned by the equations ½ x_ (t) = A1x(t) + Bu(t) if ctx(t) · 0 x_ (t) = A2x(t) + Bu(t) if ctx(t) ¸ 0 (1) where B 2Mn;m and Ai 2Mn, i = 1; 2, are such that A1;A2 coincide on the hyper- plane V =Kerct. We consider in the set of matrices de¯ning the above systems the simultaneous feedback equivalence de¯ned by ([A1;B]; [A2;B]) » ([A0 1;B0]; [A0 2;B0]) if [A0 i B0] = S¡1[Ai B] · S 0 R T ¸ i = 1; 2 with S(V) = V This equivalent relation corresponds to the action of a Lie group. Under this action we obtain, in the case m · 1, the semiuniversal deformation, following Arnold's technique. Then the problem of structural stability is studied.Postprint (published version

Versal deformations in orbit spaces

AbstractGiven an orbit space M/Γ and an equivalence relation defined in it by means of the action of a group G, we obtain a miniversal deformation of an orbit through a miniversal deformation in M with regard to a suitable group action of G×Γ. We show some applications to the perturbations of m-tuples of subspaces and (C,A)-invariant subspaces

Earnings Mobility in Times of Growth and Decline: Argentina from 1996 to 2003

In recent years, the economy of Argentina has experienced both rapid economic growth and severe economic decline. In this paper, we use a series of one-year long panels to study who gained the most in pesos when the economy grew and who lost the most in pesos when the economy contracted. To answer these questions, we test two hypotheses both unconditionally and conditionally. The ?divergence of earnings? hypothesis holds that in any given year, the highest earning individuals are those who experienced the largest earnings gains or the smallest earnings losses in pesos. The ?symmetry of gains and losses? hypothesis holds that those groups that gained the most in pesos when the economy grew are those that lost the most in pesos when the economy contracted. Both hypotheses are decisively rejected in the data. Rather, we find that it is the lowest income individuals and groups who gain the most in pesos, whether in good times or in bad. Thus, the panel data analysis performed in this paper presents a picture of economic growth that is much more pro-poor than one gets from cross sectional inequality comparisons.finance, growth, inequality, Argentina, survey, gains, losses