In a couple of recent posts commenting on the disappointing performance of our industrial exports, and linking to the Dutch disease and the almost total absence of national industrial policies-beyond the high dollar pair & low rates but do not guarantee that facilitate productive investment (and even you can play against, as illustrated by the recent dynamics of low rates of consumption boom, inflation and real appreciation).
Following these comments, a reader suggested that it would incomplete falling net exports confused with poor industrial performance. Sure enough: an industrial policy may well be short on the external front, if the period of growth coincides with a sharp increase in imports of capital goods. And even can point to no external competitiveness, but the distribution of primary income through the generation of quality employment (the industry tends to generate on average more qualified and better-paid services, which, as noted on occasion can live from Chile to copper, but Argentina has too much population to live in soy).
What can we say about these two aspects of industrialization, in particular, sometimes re-industrialization ruling party put forward by economists as an emblem of the model, and largely feared industrialization of the emerging world following Chinese Dutch disease? Far from encouraging.
After a steady decline in the 90s, accelerated the crisis of 1999-2001 and partially reversed in the recovery of 2002-2004, industrial employment has not stopped shrinking as a percentage of total employment, measured both in the formal universe ( white) and taking the most comprehensive sample of the Permanent Household Survey.
This contraction produced a hand fall in the "industrial raw": the industrial worker paid plus over other sectors, having rebounded in 2003-2005 with the growth of the undervalued currency and (the latter, by the highest industry tradable component ) lost ground to achieve (apart from the ups and downs of the last crisis) to 2003 levels.
Both stories are consistent with an industrial product, again leaving aside the epiphenomenon of the crisis and recovery of the Century), has not stopped falling throughout the period as a percentage of GDP.
So far, the arguments validate deindustrialization hypothesis implied in my previous post. But this hypothesis (which may be developed targeting both the government failed to take advantage of hedging a benign context for development, as pointing to an adverse Dutch disease context of industrial development, which inhibited only the high dollar until inflation inertial reached double digits), you can tell a story incomplete.
First, when looking at this film from further back we see that the process of deindustrialization has been a visible pattern in times of dollar and inflation of all kinds. In fact, forcing a little empirical argument, could be said that in recent years the process, although not stopped, slowed.
The other fact to keep in mind is that this pattern is not specific to Argentina, but a feature of the entire region. As I search the data to illustrate the latter, leave two disturbing assumptions essential to the debate on national and regional development.
(i) A recent World Bank report notes that the quality premium (the wage differential between high and low employment grade) dropped (good from the standpoint of income distribution), the effect of lower demand for skilled labor. How qué punto estamos perdiendo nuestra celebrado capital humano frente a los emergentes asiáticos?
(ii) En un panel en el que me tocó participar la semana pasada en Washington, un colega del BID mencionaba, a raíz de la enfermedad holandesa (y las esperables pero no por eso menos preocupantes protestas de los economistas ortodoxos de la región sobre las intervenciones y controles cambiarios) que tal vez hayamos perdido la ventana de la industrialización y a los productores de commodities nos toque ser el granero del mundo.
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