Isabel Sanz, María Gadea y Marcela Sabaté (Universidad de Zaragoza)
This paper examines the degree to which Argentina took advantage of seigniorage between 1875 and the approval of the Austral Plan in 1991. We apply a recursive analysis to the causal relation between budget and money and find that the intensity of this link varies over time. The intensity drops in the years of sustained growth and economic convergence, between 1890 and 1913, and recovers in the years of stagnation and economic divergence, between 1950 and 1985. Moreover, the instability in the relation between budget and money found for the late nineteen eighties fits in perfectly with the view that deficits, which had been instrumental to understanding the path of money for so long, cannot provide a satisfactory explanation afterwards.
