Matias Vernengo, Professor of Economics at Bucknell University, will discuss the last 10 months of Javier Milei’s presidency in Argentina.

Javier Milei was elected president of Argentina last November, and was inaugurated later in December, facing an economic crisis that has been ongoing for too long, and that he claims was caused by the Peronist socialist agenda. The deep and persistent crisis explains, to some extent, how Milei, perceived by many as an outsider, rose to power. The truth is that Milei is part of a typical cycle in Argentine society that was referred to as the Argentine pendulum, by Marcelo Diamand, one of the key Structuralist economists from Argentina. For Milei the crisis is essentially caused by populist governments that overspend, and is fiscal in nature. However, the actual roots of the crisis are associated with the external debt in dollars, rather than the domestic debt in pesos, which, in turn, results from deep structural problems exacerbated by neoliberal policies. The likelihood of another external default is substantial.

This program is co-sponsored by the Program in International Studies.