| The main objective of this thesis is to explore empirically the distributional effects of trade policies in Argentina. The analysis provides an evaluation of the distributional impact of Mercosur---a regional trade agreement that involves Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay---and aims to clarify how the gains and losses are distributed across levels of income.; The distributional study is based on the estimation of compensating variations for each Argentine household. The focus is on the role of the household as a consumer, income earner, and public transfer recipient. The analysis uses a non-parametric empirical procedure that identifies average gains and losses at the household level across the entire distribution of income and allows for a better role for measurement over assumptions.; The main finding of the thesis is that Mercosur had a pro-poor bias: on average, poor households gained from the reform, while rich households clearly lost. On the labor income side, the change in trade taxes caused an increase in the nominal wages of unskilled workers and a decrease in the nominal wage of skilled workers that favored poor households and hurt rich households. On the consumption side, the effects are positive at most income levels. Since the magnitudes of the labor income effects dominate the magnitudes of the consumption and public transfer effects, Mercosur had a net pro-poor bias.; To examine the robustness of these findings, the analysis assesses the relative distributional impact of the response of the labor income of the household head, of the labor income of other members of the households and of non-labor income. The results confirm the pro-poor bias of Mercosur and indicate that while all the reforms and shocks taking place during the 1990s worsened the distribution of income in Argentina, Mercosur was not responsible for these trends.; Finally, the analysis pursues an extension to the distributional effects of trade policies that explores the impact of globalization. Upon raising export prices and declining import prices during the 1990s, the results show that globalization---as opposed to Mercosur---benefited rich households and hurt poor households. |
