Argentine Postwar Economic Policies

Abstract

In the following paragraphs we try to describe the economic policies by means of which Argentine authorities tried to cope with the country's economic difficulties during the post war years, particularly after 1949. The official approach, it is clear, paid much attention to the foreign sector of the economy. This is, however, hardly surprising since, from the early fifties and up to the present, policy-makers have been struggling within the constraints imposed by the balance of payments. It is a basic hypothesis of this paper that the general « appreciation » of the situation, and the strategies devised to meet it have remained substantially the same under all governments regardless of their political affiliations: tactis may have varied but the underlying conception -one might call it a « model » of the economy, though the word was not used by the officials themselves- has been practically unchanged all along.