The long and mostly failed history of price controls in Argentina

While debates about inflation might feel new in the developed world – to younger citizens at any rate –, that certainly isn’t the case in Argentina, where much of the discussion in politics, media, and academia over the last decade has revolved around what causes prices to rise.

For Vice President Cristina Kirchner and her supporters, the words of White House Press Secretary Jen Psak, who blamed recent hikes in the U.S. on “corporate greed,” were music to her ears. “Listen to her carefully. She is not Argentinian and much less a Peronist. She is the spokeswoman for the U.S. government, explaining why prices rise, especially that of meat, which U.S. consumers also endure – and she says it’s the greed of meat conglomerates,” Ms. Kirchner tweeted out recently.

The thesis of corporate greed has been central in Kirchnerite discourse about inflation, and it has accompanied many policies attempting to keep a lid on rising prices, the most notable being price controls.

Ms. Kirchner’s late husband Néstor Kirchner tasked a controversial close ally with dealing with inflation during his time as President: former Secretary of Commerce Guillermo Moreno – whose daily routine consisted in reading through the price lists of retailers, comparing them with their cost structures, and phoning up businessmen to warn them if they were stepping out of line.

The legend of Moreno grew so big that the media started publishing rumors of him putting a gun on his desk when businessmen came to negotiate prices, in a not-so-subtle move to...