The Social Market Economy as a Feasible Policy Option for Latin Countries

The different responses of various types of economies to economic policies are an interesting area for researchers, particularly for comparative assessments. In recent times, many countries have experienced dif culties handling rigorous budget constraints and monetary policies that economic consultants have pre- sumed to be bene cial for the German economy in particular and to be essential conditions of prosperity. Such policies are said to have been deeply affected by the ideas of Ordo-liberalism and the soziale Marktwirtschaft (SMW) (Varsori and Poettinger 2014). Therefore, this work studies the extent to which the German style of policy-making can be exported and, preliminarily, what this model is and how deeply it is derived from the SMW model of policy-making.1 A deep analysis of the German policy-making model would be too ambitious for a paper. The scope of this writing is limited to the history of economic thought and to a synthetic comparative assessment of the policy-making histories of Argentina and Italy, two possible targets of SMW policies.