The Productivity Slowdown of The Argentine Economy

ARIEL COREMBERG

Bahia Blanca

Congreso; JOLATE 2009; 2009

Universidad Nacional del Sur

One of the expected phenomena of the different macroeconomic regime applied in Argentina during the last decades would engender important productivity gains in the whole economy: through positive spillovers from special inputs and complementary effects from dynamic industries thanks on the incentives provided by the economic policy, especially through the real exchange rate.   This paper measure the sustainable TFP (productivity gains independent of short run cyclical behavior and quality change of inputs), taking into account special inputs contribution as ICT, Human Capital and Natural Resource, and shift-share sectoral analysis of TFP.   The estimations show a sustainable TFP slowdown, mainly due to scarce within and cross dynamic productivity effects.   So the Argentine economy could not take advantage in the long run from positive spillovers from special inputs and static structural change, in spite of short run correlation between real exchange rate and sectoral productivity gains.