巴德学院利维经济研究所-就业保障：阿根廷犹太人计划的教训及其改革（英）

Working Paper No. 1088 The Job Guarantee: Lessons from Argentina’s Jefes Plan and Its Reform by Agustín Mario Universidad Nacional de Moreno-CONICET (Argentina) & Levy Economics Institute (USA) August 2025 Author contact email: amario@unm.edu.ar The Levy Economics Institute Working Paper Collection presents research in progress by Levy Institute scholars and conference participants. The purpose of the series is to disseminate ideas to and elicit comments from academics and professionals. Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, founded in 1986, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, independently funded research organization devoted to public service. Through scholarship and economic research, it generates viable, effective public policy responses to important economic problems that profoundly affect the quality of life in the United States and abroad. Levy Economics Institute P.O. Box 5000 Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-5000 http://www.levyinstitute.org Copyright © Levy Economics Institute 2025 All rights reserved ISSN 1547-366X 1 ABSTRACT: According to current macroeconomic models, there is a need to maintain a natural rate of unemployment to contain inflation. Put simply, unemployment is considered an (inevitable) cost of price stability. Even some Post Keynesian economists believe the so-called balance-of-payments (BOP) constraint imposes a trade-off between inflation and unemployment in developing countries. On the contrary, what has come to be known as Modern Money Theory (MMT), from its inception, argued that full employment and price stability (as defined) can be achieved simultaneously, through a labor buffer stock or Job Guarantee (JG). In addition to the theoretical literature on the JG, there have been a number of “real world” experiences. In particular, Argentina´s Jefes y Jefas de Hogares Desocupados program (“Jefes”) has been considered, in the MMT literature, as a (limited) JG case study. While the Jefes and its reform have been addressed in the past, this article considers the rationale for such reform within the broader framework of an economic policy based on two fundamental pillars of social inclusion: the expansion of social security and aggregate demand management that would drive economic growth and, thus, job creation. While both job creation and expansion of social security allowed for a steep decline in poverty and extreme poverty rates during the 2003–15 period, the economy did not reach full employment; in fact, jobs were lost for the less skilled. Not only did aggregate demand management not secure full employment, but it proved to be inherently inflationary. Indexation of public wages, social security payments and virtually every price paid by the government compounded the problem and institutionalized inflation. After the fall of the currency board in 2002, Argentina defaulted on its foreign currency public debt and implemented the Jefes, which could have been expanded to achieve full employment and