En primer lugar, la elección del espacio geográfico se fundamenta en el hecho de que la Argentina es un país con crisis recurrentes y de magnitudes tan importantes que no se aprecian antecedentes históricos similares. Ultimately, neoliberal ideologies were pivotal in putting privatization on the policy agenda, and institutional structures and interest group mobilization helped to shape the outcomes of the privatization effort.Įl análisis de las crisis argentinas desde un enfoque tan particular como lo es el de la Teoría de la Regulación responde a dos motivaciones especiales. While finances usually provided the stated pretext for reform, privatization is now widely acknowledged to worsen the financial challenges faced by pension systems. This article examines and contrasts these three countries’ experiences in the 1980s-90s and 2005-08, probing the factors that led to or prevented privatization.
The United States also confronted efforts to privatize its Social Security system around the same time periods-in the early 1980s and the early 2000s-but ultimately chose to strengthen the existing system rather than privatizing. More than two decades later, both Chile and Argentina undertook “re-reforms” to their privatized systems, with Chile maintaining its privatized system while Argentina returned to a fully public system. In 1981, Chile became the first country to fully privatize its social security retirement system, setting an example that Argentina and numerous other countries later emulated. In contrast, under privatized systems, workers’ benefits depend on their own individual account balances and investment returns, with little or no redistribution and pooling of risk across the population. Retirement pensions are traditionally provided through government social insurance systems, which pool risks broadly across the population and provide benefits that are set in law. As a result, the government lost an amount of revenue that has been estimated at 1.0 percent of annual GDP (the equivalent of $100 billion a year in the United States) (International Monetary Fund, 1998, p 9). Payroll taxes that had gone to the government to support the old pay-as-you-go Social Security system were instead diverted to private accounts. The reason is simple-Social Security privatization deprived the government of a large amount of tax revenue. While the decision to peg its currency to the dollar would have created problems in any case, the decision to privatize Social Security made Argentina's situation more precarious. Argentina is currently negotiating with the IMF to allow for a resumption of normal credit relations, but regardless of the outcome of these negotiations, it is generally expected that Argentina will see a further large decline in its GDP. The nation was paying ever higher interest rates to finance a debt that was continually growing, due to the country's extraordinary interest burden.3 By December it was clear that there was no way out of this vicious circle without both a devaluation of the currency and some reduction of the interest burden.
These moves came in response to a situation that had clearly become untenable.
In July of 1994, with the strong support of the World Bank, Argentina partially privatized its Social Security system.2 In December of last year, Argentina finally removed its currency from its peg with the dollar, and halted payments on its debt, after four years of recession.
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