Cuban Economy Research Articles

De los ciclos de no especialización a la era del azúcar: Elementos de historia de Cuba en un largo período (1895–1959) (PARTE II)

This article analyses the history of the Cuban economy over a very long period. Its first part (last edition) was devoted to the period extending from 1492, when the island was “discovered”, to 1898, when the War of Independence ended. This part analyses the development of the economcy during the 20th century until the victory of the Revolution in 1959.

Facilitating entrepreneurship in the failing Cuban economic model?

Purpose This study aims to understand the necessity of entrepreneurship in a poor emerging economy, where the supportive entrepreneurial ecosystem is not in place. Design/methodology/approach In the years 2015 and 2019, this study survey first-time small-scale emerging entrepreneurs within the new entrepreneurial ecosystem in Cuba. Findings The results suggest that the entrepreneurial environment has deteriorated and declined over this period. The study contributes to the understanding of high-vulnerability regions and poverty conditions as found in some emerging economies. This study contributes to the wider literature on policies that inhibit or stimulate necessity entrepreneurship in emerging economies. Originality/value The study responds to calls for a better understanding by offering new insights into necessity entrepreneurship in challenging contexts under poverty and crisis; and the ways for recovery. It provides insights into the underexplored Cuban economy.

Achievement and challenges of the Cuban Science, Technology, and Innovation System: A perspective on computational science

AbstractAn appropriate arranging of science, technology, and innovation systems (STIS) becomes essential for emerging countries. A good management of the system allows a more efficient use of the natural and human resources and a better answer to global challenges. Data about the Cuban Science, Technology, and Innovation System (CSTIS) and its characteristics are rare in the literature. This Perspective introduces a general landscape about the growth of the CSTIS focused on the development of computational sciences and its relation to the biotechnological and pharma technologies. General features, main results, and challenges of the CSTIS system are presented here. On the other hand, growth of computational sciences is crucial because they allow to save material and human resources, energy and time, and their progress become critical as a support of the applied research, mostly in the field of the biotechnology and pharma industry. In this paper, the most relevant Cuban groups that perform research in computational chemistry, computational physics and bioinformatics are reported. According to my opinion, the training of new professionals in transdisciplinary fields (like bioinformatics), new technological infrastructure available and the accumulated experience of the computational research groups is a good platform to think about a promising future of these sciences and their contribution to the Cuban economy and society. Cuba's experiences in the management of the STIS may be very useful for emerging countries, especially those with low financial resources.

Antagonismo de Trichoderma harzianum y Trichoderma viride sobre aislados de Fusarium spp. procedentes de Nicotiana tabacum

Tobacco production is a key line in the Cuban economy and generates the largest income in the agricultural sector. Within phytopathogens affecting this plant, Fusarium spp., constitutes a pest of interest, due to vascular involvements that cause deterioration of the commercial value of the leaf. Therefore, the research was carried out with the aim of determining the antagonistic activity in vitro of native strains of Trichoderma harzianum and T. viride on isolates of Fusarium oxysporum and F. phyllophylum, from Nicotiana tabacum L. in Granma province, Cuba. The work was carried out at the Laboratory of Agricultural Microbiology, University of Granma. Half dextrose potato agar was prepared to establish the dual crops of Trichoderma spp. vs. Fusarium spp. Once the treatments were established and the incubation time had elapsed, the percentage inhibition of mycelial growth, antagonistic capacity and mycoparasitic activity was determined. A fully randomized design with four replicas per treatment was used and a two factorial ANOVA and Tukey test (p≤0.05) were used for statistical processing. It was shown that the strains of Trichoderma spp., recorded intermediate values of phytopathogenic inhibition, the competitiveness of the antagonist was mostly located in class two of the Bell scale and it was found that penetration, winding, vacuolization, deformation and granulation constitute the main forms of mycoparasitism. Which points to this biocontrol method as an alternative to consider for the management of Fusarium spp., in tobacco agroecosystems.

We Are Cuba! How a Revolutionary People Have Survived in a Post-Soviet World

From the moment that Cuba passed into the world at large as a subject deemed worthy of sustained scholarship—which is to say, ever since January 1, 1959—the topic of Cuba developed into something of a Rorschach blot: Cuba as a point of view. Cuba as a politics. Cuban studies—what was once upon a time known as “Cubanology”—emerged out of a charged environment of polemics—that is, a politics—with defenders and detractors of the revolution in robust dispute about almost all facets of the Cuban condition, past and present. Disinterest and dispassion have rarely been hallmarks of Cuban studies. Objectivity—perhaps. Neutrality—never.Much has changed in the intervening decades. Cuba has changed. The literature on Cuba has changed. Social scientists have introduced complexity. Humanists have offered subtlety. Detachment has reduced engagement. Mostly. Traces of the politics persist, of course, inscribed in new paradigms of scholarship, precisely within the very narratives rich with complexity and subtlety.It is in this sense that one welcomes the appearance of Helen Yaffe's We Are Cuba!, a spirited defense of the Cuban Revolution that, as Yaffe indicates in the opening sentence of the acknowledgments, “owes its existence to the Cuban people whose principled intransigence and revolutionary resilience sustained their system into the post-Soviet world” (p. vii). The defense of Cuban socialism is unabashed and unambiguous; it is all-encompassing and well documented. The years of the Special Period serve as Yaffe's point of departure, nearly a decade during which Cubans experienced daily life as a vertiginous free fall into an incomprehensible abyss. Yaffe is indeed correct to celebrate the resourcefulness of the Cuban people and the resolve of the Cuban leadership at a time of withering adversity—all in all, achievements properly recognized and correctly acknowledged, a tribute indeed to the genius of Cuban pragmatism. And throughout the book Yaffe chronicles the country's well-known advances in biotechnology, health care, and education.But all is not well, Yaffe understands. There are incalculable moral costs and enduring psychic consequences to decades of “principled intransigence and revolutionary resilience,” of unrelieved struggle and unending sacrifice for a future that never arrives. Vast numbers of Cubans continue to experience the circumstances of daily life with a grim resignation. Yaffe is correct to note that “the prospects for the revolutionary people of Cuba are deteriorating”—an observation offered before COVID-19 arrived to the island (p. 277).In what is otherwise a most complete book, some lapses rise to the level of glaring omissions. The failure to address the subject of race relations in post-Soviet Cuba is inexplicable. The silence on the economics of immigration is similarly perplexing. Any discussion of the solvency of vast numbers of Cuban households—and to a large extent the Cuban economy itself—must acknowledge the extensive support networks from abroad. The importance of remittances cannot be exaggerated, presently an estimated $4 billion annually and constituting one of the principal sources of foreign exchange.We Are Cuba! makes for good reading. It offers an important point of view through which to engage the subject of contemporary Cuba. It will no doubt provoke lively debate, all in the spirit of the polemics of old: a reminder of the very things that made Cuba so interesting in the first place.

The consequences of the Cuban embargo escalation driven by the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the global economy

The world economy is facing an unprecedented crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the real scale of the imminent crisis of neoliberal model, accelerating its development and aggravating its consequences. The situation in the global economy had a negative impact on the Cuban economy, especially since it coincided with tightening of economic embargo by Donald Trump Administration against Cuba launched more than 60 years ago. This article provides a preliminary assessment of the consequences of the crisis bearing in mind that the damage will depend upon duration and intensity of the pandemic around the world. Given the open nature of the Cuban economy, the estimates are based on the projected dynamics of the global economy. In the first part of the article the author, relying on extensive statistics, analyzes international context in which the economic situation in Cuba is developing, as well as the key obstacles to the country’s economic development. Further on, the author examines in detail the course of COVID-19 pandemic development in the country, assessing key peculiarities of the government program to combat the virus. The author also makes a detailed analysis of the government program for economic recovery and development, paying specific attention to the peculiarities of the monetary regime in force in Cuba. In the final part of the article the author provides an analysis of the main priorities of the government at the present stage, namely, increasing foreign exchange earnings, food production and improving the efficiency of capital investments, especially foreign direct investments. The author concludes that the key factor for Cuba development will be the effectiveness of application of the economic policy approved by the government and promptness of the reforms that are required to overcome existing obstacles.

Internal and external constraints of the Cuban production sector

AbstractThis paper aims to explain the growth of the Cuban production sector between 1975 and 2014 by considering both demand and supply factors simultaneously. The research provides new empirical data on this topic through the application of a simultaneous equation model that considered the effect on the product of internal and external constraints most relevant to the Cuban economy, and the impacts of these over time. Its results confirm that the growth of the Cuban production sector was primarily limited by two factors: On the one hand, an overly centralized regulatory framework that reduces the global efficiency of the Cuban economy; and, on the other hand, a foreign exchange deficit that restricts its import capacity and the sustained growth of the Cuban capital stock. Therefore, the Cuban production sector's growth could be fostered by both a greater decentralization of its regulatory framework and the implementation of industrial and commercial policies geared to make Cuban exports more competitive.

The EU to the Rescue of the Cuban Economy? the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement (PDCA) and the State of Cuba-EU Economic Relations

The Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement (PDCA) between the E.U. and Cuba was an important change in the way that the E.U. sought to engage with developing states. PDCA remains an important milestone for European foreign policy. It has become the template for European engagement with states and a means of projecting European values (either in the form of capacity building or continuous dialogue through trade and structural elements) in trade. Its importance was underlined by the late 2020 negotiations of a similar pact, a “Comprehensive Agreement on Investment,” with the People’s Republic of China. It makes sense, then, to consider the form and substance of Cuba-EU trade through the lens of the PDCA, and that is the object of this paper. The paper is divided into two parts, the first examines the PDCA in detail. In that context it seeks to extract the core bargain the Europe has been willing to strike as the foundation of its trade relationships with states the conduct of which are incompatible with European values and its human rights law. Part 3 then examines the state of trade relations through 2020, and in the shadow of the global pandemic. What appears here is that despite the transformation of driving trade principles, the state of actual trade and investment remains little affected. But that is not what PDCA appears to have bought the E.U. Rather, PDCA is an important element in the project of international normative legalization, that is in the construction of a distinct “common position” grounded in the narratives of the foundational normative principles of liberal democracy, markets and human rights.

US–Cuba relations under a Biden administration

The incremental liberalisation of the Cuban economy may provide new opportunities for the Biden administration’s intended re-engagement of Cuba, but deep-seated American reluctance and Cuban distrust will probably yield a slow, low-key diplomatic process. Reviving diplomatic negotiations on issues of mutual interest, and gradually widening the scope for purposeful travel and restoring family visits and remittances, would be sensible first steps.

Algunas reflexiones sobre la covid-19 y turismo en Cuba.

Cuba es un destino turístico interesante y complejo de analizar por su gran cantidad y variedad de recursos de interés, así como por su ubicación privilegiada en el contexto geográfico del Caribe Insular y Centroamérica. También por la significativa importancia geopolítica durante los últimos 60 años con respecto a América Latina y por sus históricas y contradictorias relaciones con su cercano y poderoso vecino del Norte, los Estados Unidos de Norteamérica (EE. UU.). El turismo como fuente de divisas representó en el 2018, para Cuba el segundo lugar en la economía, con un crecimiento promedio anual del 11% entre 1990 ”“ 2007, y del 6%, más ajustado a la realidad mundial, hasta el 2016. A partir del 23 de marzo se canceló el turismo para Cuba con el cierre de aeropuertos y puertos dado el creciente número de personas contagiadas por el nuevo coronavirus (SARS COV.2) resultado del contacto entre cubanos y turistas y emigrados cubanos muchas veces asintomáticos. Desde el inicio de la COVID-19 en Cuba, el tratamiento a los enfermos contagiados no estableció diferencias entre turistas y nacionales, siendo totalmente gratuito para ambos, incluida la prueba diagnóstica, medicamentos y hospitalización. Resulta difícil realizar un pronóstico de cuánto durará este proceso de recuperación, en medio de una fuerte recesión de la economía mundial y las dificultades adicionales que afrontará Cuba para lograrlo, sometida a un bloqueo económico, financiero y comercial de los EEUU contra Cuba desde 1961. Se deberá promocionar la seguridad y como se manifiesta el desarrollo de un sistema de salud integral e inclusivo en el país, ello puede convertirse en una acción positiva para recuperar al turismo internacional, pues la preocupación por su seguridad será un elemento importante para los turistas -en el periodo de post pandemia-, para decidir los destinos a visitar. Esta pandemia demuestra, más que cualquier ideología o discurso, la necesidad e importancia ineludible de los bienes públicos: salud, investigación, educación… sin olvidar la solidaridad entre las personas.

El suavizado exponencial en el pronóstico de series no estacionarias.

El turismo es uno de los sectores más dinámicos de la economía cubana y una de sus principales fuentes de ingreso. A partir del mes de mayo del 2019 el arribo de visitantes a Cuba ha comenzado a desacelerarse como resultado del recrudecimiento del bloqueo. Los efectos inmediatos de la puesta en vigor del Título III de la Ley Helms Burton han provocado una desaceleración del crecimiento del número de visitantes y de los ingresos en los últimos meses. En términos estadísticos estos efectos se traducen en un cambio de tendencia en la serie de visitantes que se caracteriza además por su marcada estacionalidad. El estudio aborda técnicas econométricas para la desestacionalización de la serie y la búsqueda de pronósticos en el corto plazo que garanticen el mínimo error. Se utiliza el Suavizado exponencial específicamente el Modelo Multiplicativo Winter para proyectar el comportamiento del arribo de visitantes. Los pronósticos de la serie son una importante herramienta para los decisores del sector que se enfrentan a un entorno dinámico y de gran incertidumbre.

Where the Cuban Economy Stands in Latin America: A New Measurement of Gross Domestic Product

This article presents new measures of total and per capita gross domestic product (GDP) and productivity of the Cuban economy, comparing them with ten economies of similar size in Latin America and the Caribbean (i.e., LAC-10). The calculations show that the Cuban economy has been losing relative weight in the region. In 1970, total Cuban GDP was 5.3 times higher than the average of the LAC-10 economies; in 2011, it was only 1.5 times higher. In 2011, Cuban GDP per capita was estimated at US$5,973. Those of Uruguay and Panama were more than twice as high of Cuba, that of Costa Rica was 69 percent higher, and that of the Dominican Republic was 46 percent higher. The decapitalization of the economy accounts for most of the decline in Cuban income. Productivity has been growing as a result of the market reforms implemented since the 1990s, but these have been insufficient to reach the best-performing economies in the region. The estimations show that the gains that the Cuban Revolution has produced in terms of social progress have gone hand in hand with great loss of economic efficiency.

What's next for Cuba? And this issue's contents

In April the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) reported that the Cuban economy was expected to shrink by 3.7 percent in 2020 (which, if reflected on as a comment on the robustness of the Cuban economy to such an external shock, should be considered against the expected 5.3 percent average contraction of the Latin America and the Caribbean region as a whole that the Island is part of). [...]contrary to those who blame every problem Cuba ever faces on 'errors by the government', the data do not support that the serious contraction that Cuba is facing from COVID-19 is the result of, or even has been primarily exacerbated by, the country's economic policies. [...]beyond that, and once again independent of one's views about the desirability of tourism as a human economic activity (which this author has great concerns with, though more with its nature than with its amount), the data do not support that the development of the tourism industry in Cuba over the last quarter century has left its economy 'overdependent' on tourism by any meaningful comparative economic measure. Worldwide, a rounded approximate number for tourism's total contribution to world economic activity (or more correctly, the part of that which standard national accounting keeps track of as GDP) and of world employment is 10 percent of each.

Procedure and Design of a Patrimonial Tourist Product for the Municipality of “Calixto García”

Tourism has constituted one of the sectors of more impact in the Cuban economy and in the last times the offers of this type have been diversified, favoring the products related with the nature and the culture of the communities. The municipality of Calixto García is located in the western part of Holguín province, framed around the central highway and its main economic line constitutes the agricultural sector. It also has significant natural, cultural and historical resources, but their management, in the search of transforming them into products of tourist attraction has been not enough to favor a sustainable and prospective development of the municipality, due to that an efficient use of the existent patrimonial resources is made. The present work proposes a patrimonial tourist product, related with the traditions of the local popular culture, incentivizing the protection of the natural diversity and the heritage. The potentialities of the municipality in this field are also exposed, as well as the particularities and the design of the product.

La reforma económica en Cuba tras La aprobación de La nueva Constitución en 2019

El artículo evalúa la evolución del proyecto cubano de cambio económico plasmado en los Lineamientos de la Política Económica y Social del Partido y la Revolución. Casi una década después de su aprobación, estamos en condiciones de identificar avances e insuficiencias y señalar obstáculos que este inacabado proceso previsiblemente habrá de enfrentar, de conjunto con sugerencias de acción para su avance. Tras hacer referencia a etapas precedentes de reformas económicas, se analiza la progresión de los Lineamientos hasta 2019, año trascendente para el país a raíz de la aprobación de una nueva Constitución. Para esta evaluación se tuvieron en cuenta indicadores macroeconómicos, la narrativa dominante en el discurso público de los decisores de política en Cuba así como opiniones de reconocidos estudiosos de la economía y la sociedad cubanas residentes dentro y fuera de la isla. Se incorporó el análisis del contexto internacional como factor de peso en la política económica cubana, con énfasis en la condición de Cuba como Pequeño Estado Insular en Desarrollo –circunstancia a menudo subestimada tanto por los funcionarios públicos como por los críticos del modelo cubano.

Assessing the conundrums of the Cuban economy under the revolution (1959–2019)

This article evaluates the resilient challenges faced by Cuba’s economy during the six decades of the Revolution (1959–2019), mainly its historical external economic dependency upon a foreign country (the USSR and Venezuela) and the adverse consequences that occur when such relationship ends or deteriorates. Several hypotheses address that issue as well as others such as the hindrance of the US embargo/blockade aggravated by Donald Trump’s punitive sanctions and Cuban continuity of a centrally planned economy and predominance of state enterprises over the market and the non-state sector. The core is an analysis of performance of key economic indicators: GDP growth, gross capital formation, financial stability, mining-industry agriculture output, tourism and exports of professional services. Hypotheses are tested with long-term statistical series elaborated and scrutinized by the author over half a century based on Cuban official sources, as well as legislation, articles by Cuban scholars and from news media. Among the results: external dependency has declined somewhat but demands deeper economic reforms, there are no countries currently capable and willing to fully replace Venezuela’s substantial aid, the ongoing crisis provoked by the deteriorating Venezuelan economy cum Trump’s sanctions should have lesser adverse effects than the 1990s crisis that resulted from the USSR disappearance. The article is a significant contribution to the study of Cuba’s external economic dependence and its consequences, and should be also worthy for other small economies and socialist countries.

Dégradation environnementale et dragage dans la baie de La Havane (1820-1850)

The revitalization of the Cuban economy since the last decades of the 18th century marked an important milestone in the economic, social, and environmental evolution of the Havana Bay. Important facets of an integrated urban history, such as waste management, population growth, and their role in the environmental degradation of the bay have been the subject of little research. This chapter analyses the progressive environmental degradation of the Havana bay and the implementation of conservation projects during the first half of the 19th century. Reconstructing the environmental history of Havana enables us to reevaluate the political history. In this case, we observe how the socio-environmental transformations influenced the construction of the colonial state. The search for solutions to the environmental problems; developed important connections among political, economic, and scientific institutions. Accordingly, this article examines how these connections among colonial institutions contributed to create new forms of state administration.

External constraints on the Cuban economy in the current environment of uncertainty

This study seeks to explore the external factors that are acting as constraints on the Cuban economy and to identify the main opportunities that are open to it and the main threats that it faces in the current context of uncertainty. In order to accomplish this, a balance-of-payments-constrained growth model is used which, unlike any other model of this type that has been used before, incorporates the effect of the different flows of foreign exchange on the short- and long-run growth paths ofthe Caribbean economy.

Cuba as a Hemispheric Petropower: Prospects and Consequences

This article provides an overview of the evolving situation with regard to Cuba's oil prospects and explores the implications, especially with regard to Havana's foreign relations, of Cuba's potential emergence as a hemispheric petropower. It begins with an assessment of the size of the reserves and the problems of exploiting them. It then analyses the impact of the discovery of sizeable reserves on the Cuban economy and the concerns that this may raise with the US. There follows a discussion of the possible implications of Cuba becoming a petropower on international relations within the Caribbean and with Washington in particular. The article concludes that overall, the exploitation of large quantities of oil in Cuban waters of the Caribbean will be a positive development both for the Cuban economy and the relationship with the US.

Open for Business: Building the New Cuban Economy, by Richard Feinberg

Open for Business: Building the New Cuban Economy, by Richard Feinberg