Sustaining Trade Reform: Institutional Lessons from Peru and Argentina
32 Pages Posted: 19 Sep 2013 Last revised: 16 Oct 2013
Date Written: September 16, 2013
Abstract
The paper looks at how trade reform has gone in Peru and Argentina since the reforms of the 1990s. Peru provides a valuable example of sustaining reform. Argentina, on the other hand, has gone back to a protectionist trade regime that eschews WTO governance principles. The paper brings out the weakness of international obligations to limit Argentina’s return to import substitution and the pains to which Peruvian leaders have gone to maintain the management of their economy within the same rules that Argentina has so easily violated.
Keywords: Argentina, General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), governance, import substitution, institution, institutional economics, Latin America, Peru, politics, World Trade Organization (WTO)
JEL Classification: F13, O19, B52
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation