Tuesday, August 8, 2017

The wage share in Argentina

In his book, Estudios de Historia Económica Argentina, Eduardo Basualdo has several tables with the data for the share of wages in income. Sources seem to be different and not necessarily compatible (although I 'm not sure about that). He also published a paper in 2008 with additional data. The graph below adds the numbers shown here, which I think are also from Basualdo (the newspaper only cites CIFRA; I couldn't find another source in their website).
To the extent that one can trust numbers on functional income distribution, these numbers give a reasonable picture of what happened in Argentina since the first Peronist government back in 1946. It is clear that the military coup in 1976 was implemented to reduce the share of wages. The graph also puts in perspective the last progressive administration of the Kirchners, which brought wages up from very low levels, but not quite to the pre-1976 level. I would expect the decline with Macri, that seems to have started (as I predicted), will go considerably further.

3 comments:

  1. Utter failed regime over 60 years it must be very hard to do business in Argentina, looks they trying hard to go back to the stone age.

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    Replies
    1. Regime? Not sure what you mean. Since 1946 we had many different governments. And there is a clear break in the 1970s in economic policy, which is somewhat reflected in the graph (even though the data might not be very trustworthy).

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  2. Hello Matias, just discovered this blog. Please keep posting! I have a big interest in Latin America, particularly its economic policies and the political developments in the region.

    I hope your country (assuming you are from Brazil) gets it'd act together in due course.

    ReplyDelete

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