Sources of economic growth in Argentina 1994- 2004. Another case of the “tyranny of numbers”?

The main purpose of this paper is to identify the growh profile of the argentine economy during 1990-2004 period. This paper proposes a methodology in order to identify strict Total Factor Productivity (TFP) gains as positive shifts in the production function, independent from short run cyclical fluctuations in the utilization of productive factors and relative prices effects, distinguishing it from the residual or apparent TFP, which expresses a phenomenon of real cost changes but not necessarily changes in long run economic growth. The main results obtained are: The strict TFP have less pro-cyclical behaviour and a lower trend than the apparent TFP. The economic growth profile was an extensive type during the 1990-2004 period, biased to capital accumulation and utilization during the 90´s decade and based on labour input demand after the devaluation in 2002 year. These results for Argentina are analogous to the evidence found by Young (1995) and Timmer and Van Ark (2000) for the Nic´s Asian experience. Some doubts arise about the capacity of the Argentine economy to generate the necessary productivity gains in order to support sustainable long run economic growth.