The Argentine experience: Development or a succession of bubbles

This article adopts the premise that development is endogenously driven by innovation mechanisms, of which the economic elite is an eminent vehicle in that it efficiently fulfils the function of generating innovation by seeking technological quasi-rents which creative competition permanently erodes. In order for this to happen, the necessary conditions must be present so that the search for technological quasi-rents predominates over other types of profit-seeking. The interaction between the Argentine economic elite and the institutional system has enabled it to acquire non-technological quasi-rents, being essentially quasi-rents from scarce natural resources, combined with political quasi rents.