Argentina, a country of 37 million people, has one of the largest economies in Latin America. The country has a unique economic history. It experienced substantial economic success during the last part of the nineteenth and the fi rst part of the twentieth centuries. In the three decades before 1913, it grew at over 5 percent per year, and by the beginning of World War I its GDP per capita was greater than those of both Germany and France. The country’s prosperity was visible in the facades of buildings in Buenos Aires, which resembled those of European capitals.