ABSTRACT
Argentina’s politically determined experience with various arrangements for meeting her petroleum needs (see chapter 7) raises questions for the economist in terms of social costs and benefits of alternative policies. It is the purpose of this chapter to identify relevant economic criteria for judging these policies and to apply these criteria to several methods of meeting the internal petroleum needs which Argentina has experienced in recent years. Regardless of how various policies may be judged in terms of the arithmetic of economic costs and benefits, political history and prevailing social attitudes cannot be ignored in policy recommendations. Fortunately, however, there is a range of legal and administrative arrangements for achieving essentially the same economic results, or at least for realizing compromises between maximum economic efficiency and political feasibility.
