DESIGUALDAD REGIONAL EN LOS SECTORES INDUSTRIAL Y DE SERVICIOS DURANTE LA PRIMERA GLOBALIZACIÓN EN URUGUAY: EFECTOS DE LA CRISIS DE 1890-91

Abstract

Together with the recent efforts to characterize the long-term regional economic performance in Uruguay, this paper aims to investigate the effects of the financial crisis of 1890-1891 on the regional distribution of economic activity in Uruguay. To approximate the evolution of the industrial sector and services, it uses information from the business license tax (patentes de giro) between 1884 and 1899, which affected industrial and service activities throughout the country. Using this information, a new database is constructed, with annual frequency, disaggregated at regional level (departamentos), by activities and by
subsectors. The evidence shows the presence of a concentrating process of the activity at Montevideo in
the booming years prior to the crisis. After the crisis, that process is only partially reversed. As a result, the
speculative boom of the second half of the 1880s generated a gap between Montevideo and the Interior in
terms of urban productive activities, which persisted throughout the period studied.