Exceptional Argentina Di Tella, Glaeser and Llach - Thomas Piketty

only comparable (and earlier) case is that of Chile under a military regime. 43 The
crises and the reforms over the last few decades in Argentina have been deeper and
more sudden than in other countries in the region.
Besides the extreme nature of most changes in Argentina, the special characteristics
of its social structure also played a role in its large increase in inequality. In the mid-
1970s, the Argentine society was characterized by a relatively equal income
distribution, and specifically by the presence of a large fraction of workers with
middle and high qualifications. The Gini coefficient in those years was not very far
from continental Europe countries in 2000.Moreover, according to some authors, the
emergence of this publicly educated workforce can be linked to the demand for
services by the elite in a land rich economy (see Galiani, Heyman, Dabus and Thome,
2008, and Galiani and Somaini in this volume). This modern economy was thus
probably more prepared than that of its regional neighbors to incorporate more capital
and new technologies, and to absorb the changes brought by market oriented reforms
and liberalization. As discussed at length previously, most of these changes are
inequality-increasing, in the short and medium run at least. This apparent convergence
with its neighbors might be related to the comparatively higher levels of education of
Argentina’s population, which resulted in lower initial levels of inequality.
There are, however, other simultaneous factors that have only been partially
accounted for in this discussion. Explaining the breadth and speed of crises and
reforms, and of the political factors behind them, such as the specificity of the federal
structure of the country or of the Peronist coalition, is beyond the scope of this
chapter. Other chapters in this book shed some light on the exceptionality of these
factors in the Argentine case. The following chapter discusses the connection between
this inequality and the political triumphs of Peron, whose popularity stemmed, in part,
from his promises to redress social wrongs. The chapter discusses the policies
established by the two Peron administrations 1946-1955 in terms of their impact on
the income distribution and economic growth, and speculates about the impact that
Peronist beliefs still have on Argentinian policies.
43 On the positive side, Argentina was also the first of the countries in the Southern cone that emerged
from authoritarian rule in the 1980s.