Analisi del piano economico di terapia d’urto di Javier Milei in Argentina

On December 10, 2023, the radical libertarian economist Javier Milei assumed office as president of Argentina. This represents an important change for the country, which spent a long period under the influence of the Peronist movement. Notably, from 2003 to 2023, Argentina was governed by left-wing, Peronist governments, apart from four years. Under this leadership, the nation’s economic conditions reached a critical level: according to the “Observatorio Social de la Universidad Católica Argentina” (UCA), from 2013 to 2023, the percentage of the population living below the poverty threshold increased from 25.3 to 49. One of the reasons why Milei managed to receive the majority’s support is his pragmatic approach, which advocates for quick and drastic reforms to save the country from the ongoing economic crisis. In practice, to achieve this goal, the new president intends to slash government spending. But this is not all there is to it; indeed, Javier Milei has foreseen a whole “Shock Therapy” economic package aimed at taming fiscal deficit, inflation, and debt. Among its measures, we have the devaluation of the Argentine peso, and the deregulation of the economy. These choices are opposed to the previous paradigm, characterized by the introduction of strict regulation, as well as costly subsidies. These policies had in fact led to the doubling of the size of the public sector, and to a lingering inflation. The purpose of this dissertation is to shed light on the feasibility of the newly proposed economic package by means of a thorough analysis.