Las recientes tensiones en la cuenta corriente de Argentina reabrieron el debate sobre la vigencia de la restricción externa al crecimiento (rec). Durante 2003-2013, la expansión de las exportaciones resultó levemente inferior al periodo de la convertibilidad, pero una fuerte merma en la elasticidad-ingreso de importaciones permitió una atenuación de la rec. Sin embargo, la tasa efectiva de crecimiento fue superior a aquella que impone la rec según el criterio de Thirlwall, lo que fue deteriorando el balance comercial y el crecimiento. Esto se debe al déficit comercial en manufacturas de origen industrial (moi), ante la dependencia tecnológica en bienes de capital e insumos. Este trabajo analiza la evolución de la rec en Argentina a nivel global y sectorial, a fin de detectar las ramas moi de mayor impacto sobre la misma.

In recent years, a debate on the technological sources of the next long wave of growth has emerged. In this context, some authors consider that health-related industries will be more likely to generate new technological systems than defense-related industries, which have entered a stage of technological maturity (Ruttan 2006; Steinbock 2014; among others). Based on evolutionary works, in this paper we state that technological systems are characterized by a high degree of technological relatedness, which is positively associated with the possibility of a system to generate variety through the recombination of knowledge from a common base. Following this statement, this work aims to analyze technological relatedness between defense (and health) technological system(s) and other groups of products to compare their variety patterns. Based on international trade data (a panel for 60 countries and 17 years), and different measures of proximity and relatedness (e.g. sectoral competitiveness of countries), we compare defense and health technological systems regarding their potential of generating related variety through two main methods: network analysis and econometrical analysis. The main results support Ruttan's hypothesis. The network analysis shows the potential for both systems to generate related variety, but higher centrality indicators for health products. In line with that, competitiveness in health products presents a stronger correlation with competitiveness in other groups of products, both related and high and medium technology. This suggests that an improvement in countries' competitiveness in health sectors can generate spillovers on other related sectors, which can strengthen structural competitiveness and sustain long-term growth.

Durante el período de la posconvertibilidad, Argentina experimentó un proceso de crecimiento económico cuyo motor principal fue el sector industrial. Sin embargo, dada la heterogeneidad estructural histórica de la economía argentina, se ha cuestionado el grado de transformación productiva generado durante esos años. Diferentes teorías plantean que un cambio estructural requiere: (a) una reasignación de recursos y mano de obra hacia actividades intensivas en conocimiento; y (b) un proceso de diversificación productiva hacia sectores de rápido crecimiento de la demanda, para evitar presiones sobre la balanza de pagos. En consecuencia, se analizan los principales sectores industriales (clasificados por contenido tecnológico y valor agregado) en materia de producción, productividad y empleo, a los efectos de comprobar si hubo signos de un cambio estructural. Entre los resultados, se verifica una consolidación de los sectores de menor sofisticación tecnológica dentro de la estructura productiva y una profundización de la dependencia importadora (pruebas de la vigencia de la eterogeneidad estructural y la restricción externa).

This study explores the recent attempts to integrate global value chain (GVC) and national innovation system (NIS) frameworks and the extent to which it might be unachievable coherently. These recent integration attempts disregard the tension between the organizational boundaries of multinational corporations (MNC) and the national space - as a locus of learning and generation of technologies - in two ways. First, the GVC approach assimilates microeconomic upgrading to learning and innovation, which might fail to account for systemic learning processes and structural competitiveness. Second, the GVC approach assimilates production to capital circulation, which is consistent with the logic that dominates the expansion of MNCs during financialization, which is more oriented to appropriation than to the international deployment of technology. We resort to Marx’s decomposition of production and circulation processes to assess different internationalisation processes: trade internationalisation, productive internationalisation, and financial internationalisation. This analysis provides some insights to understand the limits of both approaches and the integration attempts to cope with the actual process of internationalization of production.