TY - JOUR AU - Taylor,Alan M. TI - Peopling the Pampa: On the Impact of Mass Migration to the River Plate, 1870-1914 JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Historical Working Paper Series VL - No. 68 PY - 2000 Y2 - January 2000 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/h0068 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/h0068.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Alan M. Taylor Department of Economics University of Virginia Monroe Hall Charlottesville, VA 22903 Fax: (434) 982-2904 E-Mail: alan.m.taylor@virginia.edu AB - The Argentine economy was transformed in the late nineteenth century by the mass migration of millions of Europeans. Various ideas have surfaced concerning the likely impact of this labor inflow: that it favored the wheat revolution on the pampas; that it promoted urbanization and the rapid growth of Buenos Aires; that it paved the way for Argentine industrialization; that it caused slack in the labor markets, lowering wages. This paper attempts an analysis of the impact of migration on the scale and structure of the Argentine economy and tries to resolve various competing hypotheses. The paper presents a new social accounting matrix (SAM) for Argentina, and uses it to calibrate a CGE model. Both tools show promise for further exploration of growth and structural change during and after the Belle ?poque. ER -