Argentina’s unimpressive recovery: insights from a real business cycle approach

Argentina’s GDP increased 30% between 2002 and 2005, prompting optimistic assessments that the country had finally left behind its secular stagnation. However, this strong performance followed a sharp decline in economic activity and therefore could be the manifestation of a bounce-back effect with no lasting impact on Argentina’s mediocre long-run growth rates. The paper examines this conjecture with the quantitative discipline imposed by a Real Business-Cycle methodology and concludes that the 2002-05 expansion was not only a rebound, but also considerably weaker than the model predicts, a finding not consistent with upbeat views about the country’s long-run prospects.