New research shows rapid liberalisation offers growth, along with initial pain
At first glance, Argentina faces a stark choice in the second round of its presidential election on November 19th. Sergio Massa, the current finance minister whose government is presiding over inflation of 138% and a bizarre system of various official exchange rates, is facing Javier Milei. Mr Milei is a libertarian who says he wants to tear down the system, borrowing ideas from Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman and other free-market economists.
These days America has a new consensus, which takes a sceptical view of globalisation’s benefits, prioritises domestic interests over international ones and favours large-scale subsidies in order to speed up the green transition and bring home manufacturing. With less chivvying from the West, governments elsewhere feel less pressure to reform their own economies. Argentina’s free-marketeers in the 1990s drew on deep links with America. Fewer such connections exist today.