Ciclo económico 1995-2002, y dinámicas de empleo en el Partido de General Pueyrredón, Argentina, de lo nacional a lo local

Résumé

During 2001 and 2002, Argentina experienced an economic crisis which was characterized by low State intervention in regard to policies to protect employment during the previous period. The cycle under analysis begins with the so-called "Efecto Tequila" originated in the 1994 Mexican crisis; it has an expansive phase of output growth going from 1995 to 1998, and a recessive phase from 1998 to 2002, where the product ends at similar values to those at the start of the cycle. This cycle led to the 2001 political crisis with the fall of President Fernando de la Rua and it extended to a social crisis with deteriorating living standards until 2002 when a period of expansion began, which continues until today. During this period, the State implemented neoliberal policies based on the Washington Consensus: State shrinking through privatization, a fixed rate exchange system between the Argentine peso and the U.S. dollar that impeded monetary policy implementation to the central bank, free international capital mobility and labor market flexibility. Corresponding to these, the labor market showed an evolution compatible with the economic cycle, a decrease in the unemployment rate during the expansionary phase of the cycle and an increase during recession. In this period, the Partido de General Pueyrredon always kept unemployment rates higher than average, and many times the highest in the country; so the question of how these rates are originated becomes important when territorial policies employment aimed to addressing this problem are under consideration. The work analyzes how job creation and destruction dynamics operate, in each of the phases of the GDP cycle, in the context of low State intervention and flexible labor market, at national and local level, and discriminated by branch and sector of economy activity using the so called Okun's Law as analytical tool. According to Okun's Law, there is an inverse relationship between output percentage changes and unemployment rate changes in economy. It takes the unemployment rate as an approximation to the low overall factors of production utilization; a rate reduction should result in a product increase, or vice versa, an increase in output should imply a decrease in the unemployment rate. This relationship is expressed in terms of unemployment-output elasticity for the entire economy; this elasticity indicates how much the unemployment rate decreases for a 1% GDP increase. The so-called "Okun coefficient" is the inverse to elasticity and indicates how much percentage should the GDP be increased to reduce the unemployment rate by 1%. This paper analyzes the unemployment-output elasticity for Argentina as a whole, by sectors and industries over the business cycle going from 1995 to 2002 and extends to local analysis in the case of General Pueyrredon in order to find the production structure characteristics affecting the local unemployment rate. Gross Geographic Product and local employment indicators are estimated to overcome the difficulties of local data lack and unreliability. Orientations are extracted from behavior analysis of each sector and industry and its interpretation in the context, which could be used for countercyclical policies design and implementation to maintain local employment level for General Pueyrredon during similar situations to that analyzed. The analysis found evidence that the unemployment-output elasticity is not symmetrical at different stages of the cycle and that differs by level of analysis, economic activity branch and sector both in association to the economic cycle and its satisfactory adjustment to the estimate linear and its magnitude. The methodology used allows us to find, at different territorial levels, those sectors and branches of economic activity that, from the growth in their product, have the ability to reduce the unemployment rate, and generate further growth in other sectors. Local unemployment structure is also analyzed by sex, age and economic activity branch as well as the relationship between the national and local product cycle and unemployment for each industry; and employment policy recommendations aimed to local production system are performed. Finally, possible future works to be performed from the results of this dissertation are also pointed out.