In CADE has presented a table of per capita GDP growth for decades, to show exceptional growth over the last decade, which would show that we are in a different stage, to take us to the first world.
But being consistent with the economy and social science that requires a historical analysis to settle better on stage in which such growth occurs, one must ask what conclusions we draw when we present the following table, where the analysis is about making long-term?
First we note that between 1951 and 1970 there has been a similar increase to that recorded between 1991 and 2010. How do they differ both in terms of competitiveness was the subject of CADE? What are the trends of each period?
A lover of the details certainly have to ask noting that if the growth rate year after year was not stable in the first period compared to the third period. However, the coefficient of variation in growth rates between 1951 - 1970 was 0.50, that of 1971 to 1990 of 4.62 and 1991 to 2010 of 0.87. This indicates the similarity in the dispersion in growth rates between the first and third period, including a greater instability in the latter due to the volatility of the 90s.
But talk policy similarity. It is known that the economy in the period 1951 - 1970 was driven by a liberal, while the period 1971 - 1990 by growing protectionism, returning to a liberal stage (neoliberal) in the 90s. The two periods of continuous growth have been with clear policies to promote the exploitation of resources with little attempt to promote productive activity or state or private. Thus the first period was clearly oriented towards foreign investment, a fact that generated that most activities are foreign-owned, but in the second half began the period of import substitution industrialization.
In the third period, in a similar way, the primary export orientation of the economy has made as we saw in a previous article, the country's economic structure since 1990 has not changed in terms of participation of extractive and transformative industries. Therefore we hypothesized that like the first period, investment in manufacturing infrastructure, the inability to link natural resource investment to domestic markets, technological research, etc.. seem to be again the new obstacle to the growth mainly depends on global demand for raw materials.
why we continue to criticize pop internationalists (such as Krugman writes), who speak as if the states competitiveness of firms or corporations try, they often forget the consensus of the economics around a basic tenet of economics: the productivity necessary for sustained economic growth. Appeal to competitiveness as if this variable would be a variable itself is not dependent on what A. Smith saw as the main factor for increasing wealth creation. This is a convention among policymakers.
But what we do to improve productivity levels? The answers have not yet consensus. But the discussion should turn to it. A CADE to analyze the productivity would be nice.
