The distribution of local patterns of economic activity in Argentina between the 19th and the 20th centuries

Seminario del grupo de Historia Económica

This paper has two main contributions. The first one is to present a new data set with 360 consistent geographic units (AU henceforth) defined by matching the departments of each population census between 1895 and 2010 in Argentina. This structure generates a traceable and transparent connection between the ways in which the information is presented in each census. Hence, it can be crucial to combine information on spatial social, political and economic dimensions across time. The second contribution is a methodology and the initial results of the estimation of departmental indicators of economic activity (DIEA) for Argentina for 1895 and 1961. We show that the spatial distribution of economic activity did not change much in that period, that the spatial economic inequality increased with time, and that within province inequality is a large but decreasing contributor to total spatial inequality.