Macri government: from the presidential campaign to the agreement with the IMF

• In Event: External shocks and policy responses: financial, economic and political impacts

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyse the economic and political situation of Argentina under the Mauricio Macri government. Macri’s parlamentarian activity started in 2005, when he was elected a federal deputy for the province of Buenos Aires. Two years later, he became the mayor of the federal capital, having been reelected for the position in 2011. Macri took office as the 56th president of República Argentina at the 10th December 2015 after a long mandate by the Kirchner couple. His strategy as envisaged in the promises of the electoral campaign was seen as quite different from the Kirchners’ one, waking up confident expectations both in the national and the international spheres. Having this favourable political environment in mind, we aim particularly to sistematize the main pieces of Macri discourse at the elections and over the first days of government in order to compare them with the Argentinian economic performance between 2016 and the celebration of an agreement with the International Monetary Fund in June 2018. Considering how close the facts are, this exploratory study focuses on the analysis of both the government discourse and data on the recent path of the Argentinian economy, specifically on productive activity, labour market, inflation, public finance and international transactions.

Authors

• Luiza Pecis Valenti, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul

• Ben-Hur Petry, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS)

• Leonardo B Capuano, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul