Pensamientos de economistas argentinos sobre el ciclo económico

Abstract

The majority of our economists studied business cycles in Argentina taking into consideration their historic development and reached the conclusion that, during various periods of this country's economic life, a series of facts repeated themselves, having an essentially monetary character and which were the principal cause of economic fluctuations. Those who lived during a time when this kind of studies and investigations had just begun, such as Juan B. Alberdi, José Terry, F. L. Balbín, Alfredo H. Bustos, A. Bunge, accepted the ideas of the French economist Clément Juglar and saw in the monetary desequilibrium the principal cause of business cycles. Others studied this phenomenon in the under-consumption schools, among them: Juan B. Justo, Paulino González Alberdi, Ricardo J. Musso and Leopoldo Portnoy. Later, those who learned from the perturbations of the first world war in 1914 and the subsequent economic depression of 1929, such as Raul Prebisch, Alberto Hueyo, López Frances and others, followed John M. Keynes practical suggestions and favoured monetary measures and an appropriate fiscal policy. The author emphasizes the tremendous progress of business cycles investigations carried out by the new generation of economists, which is relieved by the large amount of recent publications.