Romer on Financial Crises: Getting Argentina Wrong

It is amazing how frequently people seem to ignore the data when they discuss the financial crisis in Argentina. In a generally solid column on financial crises and their aftermath in today's paper, Christina Romer tells readers that it took Argentina 8 years to recover its pre-crisis level of per capita GDP following its 2001 financial crisis.

This is clearly not true, if the reference is to the 2001 crisis. According to the IMF's data, real per capital GDP in Argentina exceeded its 2001...