Acemoglu y nuestro subdesarrollo

La mortandad del colono (¿somos donde vivimos?)



Por Eduardo Levy Yeyati | Perfil

En Por qué fracasan las naciones, Daron Acemoglu y James Robinson sostienen que el insumo fundamental del desarrollo son las instituciones. Si las instituciones son “inclusivas”, si protegen los derechos de propiedad, distribuyen democráticamente las oportunidades (y el poder) y estimulan la innovación, las naciones florecen. Si las instituciones son “extractivas”, concentradoras de recursos, oportunidades y poder, las naciones fracasan. Sin instituciones liberales no hay innovación y sin innovación no hay desarrollo –de ahí, su pronóstico de un eventual estancamiento chino. Este determinismo institucional plantea un problema práctico: ¿estamos condenados a nuestras instituciones?

Antes de la fama mediática, Acemoglu y Robinson, junto con Simon Johnson, alcanzaron la fama académica documentando la relación entre la mortalidad del colono europeo y el crecimiento económico. La historia es más o menos así: en los siglos XVIII y XIX, los colonos se asentaron e introdujeron instituciones inclusivas en áreas donde morían menos (Estados Unidos), y se limitaron a crear instituciones extractivas en donde morían más (Africa). Así, a partir de la correlación del crecimiento económico actual con la tasa de mortalidad de los antiguos colonos, se infiere la siguiente secuencia de causalidad: mortalidad-asentamiento-primeras instituciones-instituciones actuales-desarrollo.

Más allá de las críticas conceptuales (y de algunos deslices estadísticos), que relativizaron su relevancia, estas ideas apuntan a la misma pregunta del primer párrafo: si un puñado de colonos determinaron el carácter de las instituciones que, a su vez, determinan nuestro desarrollo, ¿será que perdimos el tren hace dos siglos? ¿Qué tan persistentes son estas instituciones? En un mundo de creciente integración y mezcla, ¿cómo es que las diferencias institucionales no se diluyen en un continuo diverso y globalizado?

“Es improbable ver a un albanés manejando en Berlín sin cinturón de seguridad, pero es probable ver a un alemán sin cinturón en Tirana”, comentaba Edi Rama, primer ministro albanés, hace unos días, en una conferencia en Harvard. “A los checos, los polacos, los bálticos les fue fácil la transición al capitalismo porque bastó con que se reencontraran con su memoria, con sus instituciones presoviéticas; a nosotros nos cuesta el doble porque antes del comunismo no había nada”.

El tema resurge en una cena con argentinos en Estados Unidos. Uno de ellos me dice: “Somos donde vivimos. En Buenos Aires, tiro la basura a la vereda y el auto a los peatones; en Estados Unidos, saco las bolsas lunes y jueves a la mañana y freno en la senda peatonal”. Diferencias triviales, pero que posiblemente se extiendan a la naturalización de la evasión y la corrupción, o a la relación con el estudio, el trabajo y el poder. Sólo así la influencia de los colonos podría extenderse doscientos años.

La convicción de que “somos donde vivimos” es el perfecto opuesto a la importación de instituciones (importando personas o imponiendo un protectorado a cargo de funcionarios de países serios, como sugerían dos distinguidos economistas, Ricardo Caballero y Rudi Dornbusch, para Argentina a principios de 2002). Si el ADN institucional es local, el chileno se haría argentino en el transcurso de la charla con el taxista en el camino de Ezeiza a Plaza de Mayo. Y al mes estaría resignificando la heterodoxia económica y mudándose a Puerto Madero.

Por suerte, las instituciones son más influenciables que lo que los institucionalistas suponen. Por ejemplo, en las crisis los países suelen caer en el ranking institucional, para recuperarse en los rebotes. Como si el ranking reflejara el malhumor y el desencanto de la gente (cosa que probablemente haga, habida cuenta de que las mediciones se basan sobre todo en encuestas).

Pero más importante aún es qué nos dice el fatalismo de las instituciones de nosotros mismos. ¿Somos buenos salvajes –o señores de las moscas– contenidos y moldeados a imagen de la institución que nos toca en suerte? ¿O somos sujetos capaces de liberarnos de la matriz institucional para entenderla y modificarla?

*Economista.

Acemoglu: ¿Qué carajo le pasa a Argentina?

What’s the Matter with Argentina?

DARON ACEMOGLU AND JAMES ROBINSON

One hundred years ago Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world. For fifty years it rode a wave of favorable market opportunities and experienced one of the most successful periods of extractive growth in world history (sharing these honors with the Soviet Union and contemporary China or Sinagpore).

But extractive growth can’t last and in Argentina it didn’t. When you have a combination of extractive political institutions but somewhat inclusive economic institutions as Argentina did (and China does now) there are two ways to go, but only one leads to sustained economic growth. You can open the political system and try to move towards an inclusive society, or you can go in reverse and clamp down on the inclusivity in economic institutions giving up prosperity for power.

Argentina did the latter. Around the time of the First World War the traditional elites in Argentina made hesitant steps towards opening the political system, but they quickly decided they did not want to run the risk of losing power. In 1930 came the first military coup. Opening the political system was off the table. Then came a series of coups, and the one in 1943 brought a military officer named Juan Domingo Perón to power as Minister of Labor. Perón used this position to build an extraordinary political machine which has dominated Argentina politics more or less ever since. There is only one effective political party today in Argentina, the Peronists (official name: Partido Justicialista). The Peronists were not the traditional elites. Quite the contrary. But they seized control of the society and its economic institutions, and have been every bit as extractive as the traditional elites.

This is a pattern we called, following the sociologist Robert Michels, the Iron Law of Oligarchy. Extractive economic institutions always create struggles for control, and they tend to attract would-be elites bent on extraction, and whoever comes to power takes over a system without checks on their power. The outcome is to re-creation of extractive institutions under a different guise.

In Argentina in the 1940s, the Peronists won the struggle for power and are still on top. And the extraction still continues (even if it often takes the form of distorting economic institutions to hold on to power rather than just for personal enrichment).

Latest evidence: this week the Peronist government under Cristina Fernández de Kirchner seized a 51% share in the oil company YPF, previously majority owned by the Spanish energy company, Repsol YPF. The government immediately ousted the Chairman Sebastián Eskenazi and replaced him with the Peronist Minister of Planning. A tribunal will be formed to decide on the level of compensation!

                                       “I’m a head of state and not a hoodlum.”

Insecure property rights are actually a well known phenomenon in Argentina. Grabbing the oil company is actually small potatoes compared to “El Corralito” in 2001 when the government effectively expropriated 75% of people’s savings in banks (as we discuss in Chapter 13 of Why Nations Fail).

The failure to make the transition towards inclusive economic institutions condemned Argentina to a century of economic stagnation.

Will the same thing happen in China? Singapore?

Why Nations Fail

¿Está el capitalismo de estado imponiéndose?

Is State Capitalism Winning?

By Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson

CAMBRIDGE – In the age-old contest of economic-growth models, state capitalism has seemed to be gaining the upper hand in recent years. Avatars of liberal capitalism like the United States and the United Kingdom continued to perform anemically in 2012, while many Asian countries, relying on various versions of dirigisme, have not only grown rapidly and steadily over the last several decades, but have also weathered recent economic storms with surprising grace. So, is it time to update the economics textbooks?

Illustration by Paul Lachine

In fact, economics does not say that unfettered markets are better than state intervention or even state capitalism. The problems with state capitalism are primarily political, not economic. Any real-world economy is riddled with market failures, so a benevolent and omnipotent government could sensibly intervene quite often. But who has ever met a benevolent or omnipotent government?

To understand the logic of state capitalism, it is useful to recall some early examples – not the socialist command economies or modern societies seeking to combat market failures, but ancient civilizations. Indeed, it seems that, like farming or democracy, state capitalism has been independently invented many times in world history.

Consider the Greek Bronze Age, during which many powerful states, organized around a city housing the political elite, formed throughout the Mediterranean basin. These states had no money and essentially no markets. The state taxed agricultural output and controlled nearly all goods production. It monopolized trade, and, in the absence of money, moved all of the goods around by fiat. It supplied food and inputs to weavers and then took their output. In essence, the Greek Bronze Age societies had something that looked remarkably like state capitalism.

So did the Incas as they built their huge Andean empire in the century before the Spanish arrived. They, too, had no money (or writing); but the state conducted decennial censuses, built roughly 25,000 miles (40,000 kilometers) of roads, operated a system of runners to send messages and collect information, and recorded it all using knotted strings called quipus, most of which cannot be read today. All of this was part of their control of land and labor, based on centrally planned allocation of resources and coercion.

How is it that societies as disparate as the Greek Bronze Age cities of Knossos, Mycenae, or Pylos, the Inca Empire, Soviet Russia, South Korea, and now China all ended up with state capitalism?

The answer lies in recognizing that state capitalism is not about efficient allocation of economic resources, but about maximizing political control over society and the economy. If state managers can grab all productive resources and control access to them, this maximizes control – even if it sacrifices economic efficiency.

To be sure, in many parts of the world, state capitalism has helped to consolidate states and centralize authority – preconditions for the development of modern societies and economies. But political control of the economy generally becomes problematic, because those running the state do not have social welfare or optimal resource allocation in mind. The state capitalism of the Greek Bronze Age or the Inca Empire was not motivated by economic inefficiency; nor did it necessarily create a more efficient economy. What it did was help to consolidate political power.

At a deeper level, the real dichotomy is not between state capitalism and unfettered markets; it is between extractive and inclusive economic institutions. Extractive institutions create a non-level playing field, rents, and narrowly concentrated benefits for those with political power and connections. Inclusive institutions create a level playing field and give incentives and opportunities to the great mass of people.

But herein lies the problem for state capitalism: inclusive institutions require a private sector powerful enough to counterbalance and check the state. Thus, state ownership tends naturally to remove one of the key pillars of an inclusive society. It should be no surprise that state capitalism is almost always associated with authoritarian regimes and extractive political institutions.

This is not an endorsement of unfettered markets. The state plays a central role in modern society, and rightly so. Modern economic growth, even under inclusive institutions, often creates deep inequalities and tilted playing fields, endangering those institutions’ very survival. The modern regulatory and redistributive state can, within certain bounds, help to redress these problems. But the success of such a project crucially depends on society having control over the state – not the other way around.

To argue that state capitalism’s success proves its superiority is to put the cart before the horse. Yes, South Korea grew rapidly under state capitalism, and China is doing likewise today. But state capitalism emerged not because there was no other way to ensure economic growth in these countries, but because it enabled growth without destabilizing the existing power structure. The genius of China’s state capitalism is that it ensured the continued dominance of Communist Party elites while improving the allocation of resources, not that it alone could have provided price incentives to farmers and then managed liberalization of urban markets.

State capitalism will persist so long as existing elites are able to maintain it and benefit from it – even if economic growth ultimately stalls. And there is a good reason why it eventually will. Sustained economic growth presupposes inclusive institutions, because innovation – and the creative destruction and instability that it wreaks – depends on them. Extractive institutions in general, and state capitalism in particular, can support economic growth for a while, but only the sort of catch-up growth that South Korea experienced from the 1960’s to the 1980’s, before starting to transform its society and economy more radically.

As the low hanging fruit from catch-up growth is consumed, China, too, will be forced to choose between the economic and social freedom, innovation, and instability that only inclusive institutions can underpin and continued economic, political, and social control in the service of the elites who control the state.

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