Federico Sturzenegger

In a session in which a bill proposed by the then Minister of Transportation Florencio Randazzo, that allowed "open access" to the railroad tracks for freight transport, the Congressman managed to include the transport for passengers in this project. The law in question makes available rail infrastructure, to be used by any company created to operate rail freight as well as by individual companies. The National government put this law in practice in 2018.

He also proposed eliminating the minimum prices for the airline industry (the Executive implemented this in 2018), implementing a transparent entry system for the public administration (he implemented such schemes both at Banco Ciudad as well as at the Central Bank), he proposed, following the guidelines of the OECD a project to make firms responsible for corruption (a similar law was approved in 2017), and he proposed a mechanism to ensure social aid beneficiaries not to lose their benefits as they transitioned to formal employment (the government implemented a similar scheme known as Plan Empalme in 2017).

To develop the financial system, it introduced the Purchasing Value Units (UVAS), deposits and credits that adjust for the price level, for the first time in decades, the development of long-term credit. The result was the highest credit growth in 20 years in 2017, with a real explosion in the mortgage loan segment, a process that has continued later. We also implement a deep deregulation of bureaucratic restrictions that limits the potential growth of the financial sector.

Between 2005 and 2007, Sturzenegger was a visiting professor of public policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. During the year 2005, he was selected as Young Global Leader in the World Economic Forum in Davos and in 2006 he was awarded the Konex Prize. In 2008. when Mauricio Macri, the mayor of the city of Buenos Aires, asked him to act as president of the Bank of the City of Buenos Aires he returned to Argentina. During his tenure, the bank made a big turnaround from losing 160 million Argentine pesos annualized during the six months previous to his appointment to becoming the most profitable state-owned firm in the country six years later with record profits of more than 1300 million Argentine pesos in 2013. His management of the bank became a Harvard case study. In 2013, Federico Sturzenegger resigned as president of Banco Ciudad to become a Member of the Chamber of Deputies. He became the Governor of the Central Bank after Alejandro Vanoli left because of Mauricio Macri's rise to power 10 December 2015 and he resigned at 14 June 2018 after the peso lost more than 6% in a day.

Between December 2015 and June 2018, he served as President of the Central Bank of the Argentine Republic. Its management had three central axes: building a monetary/exchange system more suitable for the country, developing the financial system, and improving the means of payment technology.

As a Congressman, Federico Sturzenegger presented 11 bills and had numerous participations in the Chamber of Deputies. In the year 2014 he was 13º in a ranking of participation in sessions.

In December 2014 Sturzenegger presented a bill that consisted of implementing a loan scheme with the possibility of granting mortgage loans where the capital of the loan would move in line with the general level of inflation. The proposal was based on the Chilean model of indexed currency, using the Unidad de Fomento. According to the same project, implementing it would significantly reduce the interest rate on mortgage loans, approximating its value to a rental. As the value of capital is preserved, loans of 30 years or more would automatically would develop. Later on, as Governor of the Central Bank he implemented this mechanism, and the result was a significant lending boom in mortgages which led to triple digit growth rates in mortgages.

One of the bills presented by Federico Sturzenegger was one that strived for universal and compulsory education since age 3. Soon after, the government presented a similar project which consisted of the obligation at 4 years of age. Sturzenegger argued that in many parts of the world it was shown that children who receive quality early education at the age of 3–4 years, had lower dropout rates, higher educational level completed, higher wages, better academic performance later, and a lower proportion of them was in the need to receive state social assistance plans.

By the year 2013 the bank was going to move its central headquarter to a new building designed by Norman Foster. The new headquarter was designed with construction standards that would make it the most sustainable public building in Latin America.

Once the exchange restrictions inherited from the previous administration have been eliminated (modification of the exchange stock on 12/17/2015), modify the inflation targeting regime with a floating exchange rate that generates a pronounced drop in inflation. Core inflation, in particular, by December 2017 had stabilized at an annualized value of 18%, with downward expectations. This disinflation process, in turn, occurred in a context of strong economic growth (the economy grew by 4% in 2017). Even with these results in December 2017, the government decided to dismantle the system, which subsequently implied a process of increasing inflation, which motivated its departure shortly after.

In February 2008 Sturzenegger was appointed president of the Banco Ciudad, a state owned bank property of the Government of the City of Buenos Aires. Before Sturzenegger's appointment the bank was losing money. In the second half of 2007 it had suffered losses over 80 million Argentine pesos. In 2013, after six years under Sturzenegger's management, the bank reached a record profit of more than 1300 million Argentine pesos, becoming the most profitable state owned company in Argentina. Between the years 2008 and 2012 the bank tripled its net worth and multiplied by 7 its loans to medium and small enterprises, by 6 its loans to large enterprises, and by 4 its mortgage loans.

The idea of dark matter has not gone without criticism. First, Willem Buiter has argued that dark matter should result in a higher rate of return on U.S. external assets than on U.S. external liabilities. However, he claims, there is no convincing evidence that this is the case. Second, the U.S. income from dark matter seems to vary enormously from year to year, even though it stems from permanent characteristics of the U.S. economy like the export of know-how. Lastly, Mathew Higgins, Thomas Klitgaard, and Cedric Tille agree with the assertion that U.S. foreign assets are currently undervalued. However, they argue that more important, U.S. foreign liabilities are overvalued. Thus, The U.S. has fewer foreign liabilities than is currently assumed; this fact (rather than dark matter) explains the unexpectedly high net income. In a 2007 article, Hausmann and Sturzenegger respond to some of these critiques, defending the existence and function of dark matter.

Dark matter is a term coined by Sturzenegger and Ricardo Hausmann to refer to the 'invisible' assets that explain the difference between official estimates of the U.S. current account, and estimates based on the actual return on the U.S. net financial position. Specifically, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) estimated the net U.S. current account deficit to be 2.5 trillion in 2004. However, according to Sturzenegger and his colleague Ricardo Hausmann, the U.S. current account deficit cannot in reality be as high as it is estimated to be: otherwise, the U.S. would be paying large amounts of interests on its debt. This does not seem to be the case: net income in 2004 was still a positive 30 billion, which is not lower than it was in 1980, before the U.S. built up its current account deficit. Thus, the authors argue that the "real" cumulative current account between 1980 and 2004 had in fact been positive, and that somehow a large amount of (foreign) assets are being left out of the calculations.

In 1998, Sturzenegger left his position in YPF and became Dean of the Business School at Torcuato Di Tella University until the year 2001. In 2001, he interrupted his academic profession and decided to participate in the public sector as Secretary of Political Economy in Argentina. In 2002, he returned to his previous occupation as Dean at Torcuato Di Tella University until the year 2005.

Between 1991 and 1994, Sturzenegger was an assistant professor of economics at the University of California, Los Angeles. He returned to Argentina in 1995 when José Estenssoro appointed him as chief economist of YPF.

Federico Sturzenegger graduated in 1987 with an Economics degree from the National University of La Plata. He earned his Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1991.

Federico Sturzenegger (born 11 February 1966 in Rufino, Santa Fe) is an Argentine economist who was president of the Central Bank of Argentina between 2015 and 2018. Sturzenegger has a PhD in economics from MIT and was a professor of economics at UCLA, Torcuato Di Tella University (where he also was Dean of the Business School), and Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University. Currently he teaches at Universidad de San Andres in Buenos Aires and is Honoris Causa Professor at HEC Paris. Academically he co-introduced Dark Matter, a term referring to 'invisible' assets that explain the difference between official estimates of the current account and estimates based on the actual return net financial position as well as the concept of de facto exchange rates. Throughout his academic career he has published close to fifty articles in refereed journals as well as eight books. He was also Chief Economist of YPF, President of Banco Ciudad, and a National Congressman for the PRO party.