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Exceptional Argentina Di Tella, Glaeser and Llach - Thomas Piketty

Exceptional Argentina Di Tella, Glaeser and Llach - Thomas Piketty

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Figure 4. A modified Human Development Index for 1930<br />

0,80<br />

0,70<br />

0,60<br />

0,50<br />

0,40<br />

0,30<br />

0,20<br />

0,10<br />

0,00<br />

AUL<br />

CAN<br />

USA<br />

NET<br />

SWE<br />

UK<br />

SWI<br />

IRE<br />

FRA<br />

NOR<br />

DEN<br />

BEL<br />

GER<br />

AUT<br />

SPA<br />

CZE<br />

ARG<br />

ITA<br />

FIN<br />

GRE<br />

POL<br />

JAP<br />

HUN<br />

CHL<br />

YUG<br />

BUL<br />

CR<br />

MEX<br />

PHL<br />

TW<br />

THA<br />

BRA<br />

GUA<br />

CHN<br />

IND<br />

As for physical capital, an accurate comparison is probably impossible. To my knowledge we<br />

lack international, comparable estimates of physical capital for the years just before the<br />

Depression. Colin Clark (1940) does present figures for several countries for the years around<br />

1914. With 4816 "international units" of capital in 1916, <strong>Argentina</strong> stood fourth after Britain<br />

(6710 in 1913), the U.S. (5060 in 1919) <strong>and</strong> Canada (5500, though in 1929), slightly ahead of<br />

Germany (4750), France (4290) <strong>and</strong> Australia (4005) <strong>and</strong> clearly surpassed Belgium (2360),<br />

all countries richer than or as rich as <strong>Argentina</strong> right before the Great War 9 . These estimates,<br />

however, should not be taken at face value as they were collected by Clark from secondary<br />

sources using diverse methods <strong>and</strong> not correcting for international price differentials. For<br />

1934-1938, the capital items in the rankings drawn by Bennett (1951) placed <strong>Argentina</strong> sixth<br />

out of 31 countries in railway energy consumption per capita (after the Western Offshoots,<br />

Germany <strong>and</strong> the UK) <strong>and</strong> seventh (trailing the former plus France) in telephones per capita.<br />

Also, <strong>Argentina</strong> was in 1930 fifth in the world in automobiles per person, lagging only the<br />

Western Offshoots. 10<br />

Another significant dimension of <strong>Argentina</strong>'s wealth is distribution. We lack, in general, pre-<br />

Depression estimates of personal income distribution, but indicators of distribution across<br />

factors of production can be built combining Maddison's GDP data with Williamson wage<br />

series. If the US wage-GDPpc ratio is 100 for 1925-1929, <strong>Argentina</strong>'s st<strong>and</strong>s at 95. This is<br />

lower than in Canada, Australia <strong>and</strong> the Sc<strong>and</strong>inavian countries, but higher than all other<br />

European countries in Williamson's (1995) dataset except (somewhat surprisingly) Irel<strong>and</strong><br />

(Figure 6). Workers in <strong>Argentina</strong> were enjoying the benefits of general prosperity, probably<br />

more so than in an average European country. The picture of <strong>Argentina</strong>'s golden age as an<br />

9 Clark has no data for that year for the Netherl<strong>and</strong>s, Denmark, Switzerl<strong>and</strong> <strong>and</strong> New Zeal<strong>and</strong>, ahead of<br />

<strong>Argentina</strong> in per capita GDP.<br />

10 Anuario Geográfico Argentino (1941), 466.

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