INSTITUTIONAL INSTABILITY AND GROWTH IN ARGENTINA: A LONG-RUN VIEW

Abstract

Argentina has slipped from being among the ten richest countries in the world by the eve of World War I to its current position close to developing countries. What did originate Argentina’s economic retardation?. In this paper we employ a structural model to investigate the extent to which institutional instability, as captured by “Contract Intensive Money” (Clague, Keefer, Knack and Olson, 1999), conditioned capital accumulation and economic growth in Argentina and, consequently, the country’s relative international position. Our results suggest that institutional instability played a major role in Argentina’s unique historical experience of economic decline.