This Was Not Argentina's Growth and Productivity Decade

ARIEL COREMBERG

Conferencia; WORLKLEMS2016; 2016

HARVARD UNIVERSITY-IVIE-

This paper shows the methodology and main findings of recent revision of Argentina GDP official series by National Accounts Bureau. The research confirms main findings of ARKLEMS+LAND research based on standards national accounts methods and sources: GDP growth is positive bias since 2007 (date of political intervention of official statistics), distortions are important and discretionary on all industries, independent of negative bias of CPI and WPI. GDP new series change growth region rankings, showing that Argentina was the worst GDP performance of Latin America in the long run. Argentina GDP performance during recent commodity boom cycle was similar to 1990 decade, but there was a productivity slowdown. According to Argentina economic cycle behavior, the paper proposes a methodology to adjust source of growth by short run cyclical effects. Argentina as well as Latin-American region does not take advantage from last commodities boom, showing a negative productivity performance