The Kiel Plan: a debate on the intellectual roots of the Austral Plan and its stabilization measures in the years of Alfonsín (1983-1989)

Abstract

The stabilization plan, known as the Austral Plan, launched in 1985 during the government of Raúl Alfonsín (1983-1989), received from the economic discipline multiple contemporary analyses. Although it was the most outstanding economic strategy of the economic policy of those years, it received less attention from economic history studies after the events. This paper explores the hypothesis of the Kiel Plan, which involved a collaboration between German, Brazilian and Argentine economists in the intellectual origins of the stabilization plan. Thus, we examine the economic debates of that time and the versions of its intellectual roots in the press, in order to compare the economic policy measures that were discussed and to offer some reflections on the inspiration of the stabilization plan devised by the team of the then Minister of Economy Juan Sourrouille (1985-1989).