El péndulo en números: un análisis cuantitativo de los vaivenes de la política económica en Argentina entre 1955 y 2018

Argentine economic policy oscillates between two extremes. The literature has shown this both in historical narratives and through indicators of macroeconomic volatility. In this paper we present for the first time a methodological framework to construct an indicator of economic policy orientation. We build and share three monthly frequency databases of policy measures, their orientations and their changes for the period 1955-2018. We find that every two years, on average, economic policy changes its orientation, although the cycle length is longer after 1990. There were 16 dramatic changes from 'orthodox' to 'hetorodox' orientation; 9 of them within the same mandate. 50.3% of the months we analyzed were of 'orthodox' orientation, 41.3% of 'heterodox' orientation and 8.4% of 'mixed' orientation. There is no uniform relationship between economic policy orientation and political sign. Governments of all signs introduced similar economic policies at different times in history. We perform association exercises with real economy variables that confirm the robustness of our indicators and trigger the discussion for future lines of inquiry.