Autor/es
Descripción
ver mas
Colaborador
Arceo, Enrique
Schorr, Martín
Materias
Spatial Coverage
Temporal Coverage
2002-2012
Idioma
spa
Extent
254 p.
Derechos
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 2.0 Genérica (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Formato
application/pdf
Identificador
Cobertura
ARG
2002-2012
Abstract
This research is part of a long tradition in the academic literature aimed at analyzing large companies' accumulation strategy in Argentina. It aims, especially, to analyze one of the key variables -because of its potential effects of economic development: capital formation during the 2002-2012 period.
A simple formulation of the problem is: larger corporations tended to reduce their channeling of surplus into investment, despite increased profitability levels and that they had an expansive macroeconomic scenario, with high consumption levels and growing installed capacity utilization. Therefore one can notice an expansion of the gap between benefits and investment, which we define as a reduced propensity to invest, among corporate leadership, during the "posconvertibilidad”.
Thus, this research has two purposes. The first is to provide empirical evidence to comprehensively address the problem of reduced investment propensity of the country larger companies during the “posconvertibilidad”. Which, it should
be noted, is a novel contribution in this field of knowledge, since although the tendency to invest (or not) of the bourgeoisie in Argentina has been a constant
theme of research, reflection and debate (not only academic), there are no empirical studies that verify investment in large enterprises. This is related, of course, with deficient investment statistics in the national accounts. The inquiries in this direction will allow to improve the complexity of the hypothesis on this problem so important for the economic future of the country.
Hence the second objective of this research points to a more complex and difficult to identify dimension: the structural causes that influenced the phenomenon of low propensity to invest in large companies in the 2002-2012 period. That is: why larger companies, which have appropriate high profits,
chose to invest their capital in other national economies and/or consumed it in non-reproductive circuits. This is precisely the main question that this investigation will try to answer and on which, assuming its complexity, it intends to provide some evidence for reflections about it.
We conclude that demand expansion and profitability effectively failed to drive, in the absence of an accumulation pattern that tends to widen investment options, the development of internal forces so as to redirect great capital's role towards investment. We refer mainly to the largest industrial corporations, since non-industrial activities are either less exposed to international competition (as in the case of non-tradable ones) or based on the exploitation of natural
resources.
In this context, given the high level of foreign participation among top companies, transnational corporations were able to pursue their global strategies without obstacles that could tend to alter them, resulting in a clear widening of the gap between the level of benefits and of investment during
“posconvertibilidad”.
The causes of low propensity to invest among top companies during the Kirchner government period should not be looked for in excessive state intervention, nor institutional weaknesses, nor macroeconomic volatility nor in the historical trend of search of speculative profit. They must be sought for, from the perspective stated here, in the inability of both the ruling bloc as well as that of an alternative social bloc to lead the new accumulation pattern, opening new fields of investment in a highly complex international scenario that tends to relegate local subsidiaries to a passive role in the new international labor division.
Thus, in a global context marked by the intensification of competitive struggle, production internationalization and financialization as prevailing accumulation logic in central countries, transnational corporations, which are predominant
among local corporate leadership, tend to concentrate investments of high technological complexity in central countries, labor-intensive in economies with low wage costs and/or high productivity, and those seeking "market expansion"
in those places where continental productive and export platforms are established. This causes the widening of the gap between profits and investment in Argentina.
A simple formulation of the problem is: larger corporations tended to reduce their channeling of surplus into investment, despite increased profitability levels and that they had an expansive macroeconomic scenario, with high consumption levels and growing installed capacity utilization. Therefore one can notice an expansion of the gap between benefits and investment, which we define as a reduced propensity to invest, among corporate leadership, during the "posconvertibilidad”.
Thus, this research has two purposes. The first is to provide empirical evidence to comprehensively address the problem of reduced investment propensity of the country larger companies during the “posconvertibilidad”. Which, it should
be noted, is a novel contribution in this field of knowledge, since although the tendency to invest (or not) of the bourgeoisie in Argentina has been a constant
theme of research, reflection and debate (not only academic), there are no empirical studies that verify investment in large enterprises. This is related, of course, with deficient investment statistics in the national accounts. The inquiries in this direction will allow to improve the complexity of the hypothesis on this problem so important for the economic future of the country.
Hence the second objective of this research points to a more complex and difficult to identify dimension: the structural causes that influenced the phenomenon of low propensity to invest in large companies in the 2002-2012 period. That is: why larger companies, which have appropriate high profits,
chose to invest their capital in other national economies and/or consumed it in non-reproductive circuits. This is precisely the main question that this investigation will try to answer and on which, assuming its complexity, it intends to provide some evidence for reflections about it.
We conclude that demand expansion and profitability effectively failed to drive, in the absence of an accumulation pattern that tends to widen investment options, the development of internal forces so as to redirect great capital's role towards investment. We refer mainly to the largest industrial corporations, since non-industrial activities are either less exposed to international competition (as in the case of non-tradable ones) or based on the exploitation of natural
resources.
In this context, given the high level of foreign participation among top companies, transnational corporations were able to pursue their global strategies without obstacles that could tend to alter them, resulting in a clear widening of the gap between the level of benefits and of investment during
“posconvertibilidad”.
The causes of low propensity to invest among top companies during the Kirchner government period should not be looked for in excessive state intervention, nor institutional weaknesses, nor macroeconomic volatility nor in the historical trend of search of speculative profit. They must be sought for, from the perspective stated here, in the inability of both the ruling bloc as well as that of an alternative social bloc to lead the new accumulation pattern, opening new fields of investment in a highly complex international scenario that tends to relegate local subsidiaries to a passive role in the new international labor division.
Thus, in a global context marked by the intensification of competitive struggle, production internationalization and financialization as prevailing accumulation logic in central countries, transnational corporations, which are predominant
among local corporate leadership, tend to concentrate investments of high technological complexity in central countries, labor-intensive in economies with low wage costs and/or high productivity, and those seeking "market expansion"
in those places where continental productive and export platforms are established. This causes the widening of the gap between profits and investment in Argentina.
Título obtenido
Doctor de la Universidad de Buenos Aires en Ciencias Sociales
Institución otorgante
Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Sociales