"Inflation before and after economic expertise in Argentina. Public problem framing in the press (1950-1990)"

DANIEL, CLAUDIA; HEREDIA, MARIANA

Londres

Workshop; Workshop: Social Studies of the Economy in Latin America; 2016

University College of London

Argentina has been considered an extreme case of inflationist society: no other country has presented such high levels of price increase, for so long. Since the 1940s, Argentinian inflation was above the international average (by 28% a year between 1940- 1970), reaching 400% in 1976 and 3000% in 1989, with no record under 90% until the last decade of the XX century.Even if this phenomenon became a growing concern for citizens and policy- makers, inflation was not always framed as an urgent ?economic problem?, requiring expert intervention. By analysing the way price increase appeared in the national medias (basically the two major newspapers), two clear periods can be distinguished. From the 1940?s to the 1970s, inflation was presented as a social and political phenomenon, intermingled with other sources of public anxiety. On the one hand, social leaders representing workers or branch industries had a leading role claiming as well as rejecting state involvement in price increase control. On the other hand, most national newspapers had clear ideological viewpoints. Inflation explanations and solutions were diverse, clearly rooted in conflicting conceptions of the economy. While the journal La Nación represented the liberal vision, Clarín was the voice of interventionists? conceptions. Lastly, inflation was a main problem just for liberals or in particularly unstable years. Since mid-1970s, not only inflation climbed and stayed into three digits per year, its framing changed. As experts in economics were increasingly called to give their professional opinion and advise, ideological cleavages faded. Finally, inflation could be considered an urgent economic problem, involving all society members with no further distinctions, requiring the in-depth intervention of independent economists.Based on systematic archive analyses of La Nación and Clarín articles about inflation in five decades (1940-1990), as well as interviews with contemporary newspapers editors, this paper proposes a long-term history of inflation?s framing in contemporary Argentina.