Rents, Quasi-Rents, Normal Profits and Growth: Argentina and the Areas of Recent Settlement

Abstract

My intention is to re-interpret, in economic terms, the dramatic expansion during the nineteenth century of the regions of ‘recent settlement’,1 that is, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, and South Africa (not to mention the notoriously similar, but neglected, case of Russia’s Siberia). These countries and their development over the last century have some very interesting problems in common, although individual interpretation, which takes into account both economic and (most certainly) non-economic factors, is unavoidable. I can only acknowledge that the comments which follow are based on knowledge of one specific case, that of Argentina. All the same, Argentina seems to pose, even if in a somewhat extreme fashion, some of the peculiarities which have existed also for others, particularly the United States, Canada, and Australia.KeywordsExpansionary ProcessEconomic HistoryLand RentPort CityMineral LandThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.