The city of Buenos Aires in the 1890s is an extreme case in immigration history since the native workers accounted for less than one-third of the labour force. In this paper, we look at the labour market performance of Argentineans vis-a-vis the largest two immigrant groups, Italians and the Spaniards. We find that, on average, Argentineans enjoyed higher wages, but workers specialised in particular occupations by nationality. Immigrants clustered in occupations with lower salaries. Despite higher literacy levels and the language advantage, Spaniards did not outperform Italians in earnings. Ethnic networks facilitated the integration of immigrants into the host society and played a role in the occupation selection of immigrants. Our results suggest that Italian prosperity in Buenos Aires was not based on superior earnings or skills but on older and powerful networks.

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A city of trades: Spanish and Italian immigrants in late-nineteenth-century Buenos Aires, Argentina

South America and the First World War: The Impact of the War on Brazil, Argentina, Peru and Chile. By Bill Albert · New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988. x + 388 pp. Tables, notes, bibliography, and index. $42.50.

Banker to the Third World: US portfolio investment in Latin America, 1900–1986

En las decadas recientes, la historiografia ha mostrado que la corona espanola demando con frecuencia diversas contribuciones extraordinarias a sus vasallos de ambos lados del Atlantico para costear los gastos que generaron las guerras imperiales que peleo contra Inglaterra y Francia entre 1780 y 1813. En este articulo la atencion se enfoca en un espacio periferico de la monarquia en America, la intendencia de Chiapas, y se estudia la relevancia que tuvo la recaudacion de donativos y prestamos a interes para el financiamiento del deficit imperial en el ocaso de la epoca colonial.

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Fiscalidad extraordinaria en una época de guerras atlánticas: los donativos y préstamos de la intendencia de Chiapas, 1780-1813

El patrón oro

ABSTRACT The outbreak of the First World War had a strong impact on Latin American economies, due to the sharp interruption of the influx of capital and the deep disturbances that it caused in international trade. In the Argentine case, a notable aspect was, together with the increase in the fiscal deficit, the growing trade and payment balance surplus. Public indebtedness was reoriented towards the domestic market by the means of a state bank Banco de la Nación, and this institution also granted a large loan to the governments of England and France, to finance the export of cereals to those countries. This work seeks to contribute both to the debate on the financial impact of the war and postwar conflict in Argentina, as well as to the role of public banks to mitigate the ups and downs of the external sector and mitigate its effects on local actors.

Estado, banca pública y financiamiento de las exportaciones: el gran préstamo argentino a los aliados de 1918–19

The growth of Argentina’s economy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was so great that it was called “The Great Expansion”. This explains the interest of economic historians to observe, analyze and explain the conditions under which such growth occurred. One of the topics is the 1890 crisis, or “Baring Crisis”. This was seen by contemporaries as the worst economic debacle of the nineteenth century. Studies in economic history have seen this crisis both their macroeconomic aspects, and from the impact that would have occurred in the population. Also, in recent years there has been a renewed interest in the production and analysis of series of prices and wages, as key to analyzing economic indicators economy conditions and living conditions and inequality. Given this historiographical renewal, in this article a new series of prices and wages of Buenos Aires in the late nineteenth century are presented. With this new information, and open discussion with previous works, a new perspective on the evolution of prices and wages is provided, with a different perspective on the impact of the 1890 crisis.

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Agustina Vence Conti

Papers

Estado, banca pública y financiamiento de las exportaciones: el gran préstamo argentino a los aliados de 1918–19

Precios y Salarios durante la crisis de 1890 en Buenos Aires