Argentina’s Economic and Financial Map: A Geo-referenced System of Financial Services Market, Demand and Supply Indicators at the Local Level

Economist usually think and work taking into account the temporal dimension of economic and financial processes. Time plays a key role in the economic decision making process and is a fundamental input for statistical models useful to analyze and predict social behavior. Thus time invades our practice. By contrast the role of territory in economic analysis is far more neglected. Territory is usually subsumed in other dimensions which are related, but are different. As a generator and promoter of public policies, the Central Bank of Argentina undergoes periodic efforts to measure, study and analyze the access and use of financial services by households and businesses in Argentina. The information gathered for this purposes, although descriptive, presents limitations on the spatial analysis that can be derived from it. Hence, we have systematized the information available to the Central Bank in the last ten years to move beyond that limitation. The result is a set of economic and financial variables and aggregate indicators of financial services market, demand and supply for 3431 Argentine localities. Furthermore, this paper, albeit being preliminary, proposes a system of geo-referenced local indicators which can be used as input for the formulation of economic and financial policies.