Archibald R. M. Ritter

The Cuban Economy in the 1990s: External Challenges and Policy Imperatives

CUBA HAS ENTERED the decade of the 1990s in a state of profound existential crisis. The countries of Eastern Europe, whose economic and political institutions and ideologies were adopted by Cuba, albeit with some modifications, were abandoning those same institutions and ideologies. Cubas place in the international system had become one of growing isolation: Cuba had become a curiosity from the 1960s rather than the wave of the future, as it once perceived itself. By mid-1990, it appeared almost certain that the generous subsidization of the Cuban economy by the Soviet Union was about to end. Moreover, the Cuban economy

Development Strategy and Structural Adjustment in Chile, 1973-1990

AbstractIn this article, Chiles strategy of economic development and its approach to structural adjustment in the 1973–1990 period of the military junta are analyzed and evaluated, and the development strategy of the new democratically elected government of President P. Aylwin is presented insofar as it had been articulated by mid-1990.After the September 1973 golpe, the Pinochet regime adopted an externally-, and market-oriented strategy plus a gradualist anti-inflationary as well as anti-Union approach. The results from 1973 to 1979 were mixed: inflation decelerated, exports increased, and growth recovered after the 1975 recession, but unemployment rose, real wage levels declined, income distribution worsened and manufacturing employment shrank. A shift in strategy in 1979—an appreciating real exchange rate and financial liberalization with insufficient regulation—created an illusion of prosperity to early 1982. In fact, the strategy represented high policy pathology and was unsustainable, contributing...

Cuba’s Apertura to Small Enterprise

Almost from the beginning of the Cuban Revolution until 2010, official policy towards small enterprise first was to eliminate most it in a variety of policy moves culminating in the “Revolutionary Offensive” of 1968 and from 1993 until 2010 to permit a limited but contained opening to the sector. Despite this negative policy environment, Cuba incidentally generated a significant reservoir of entrepreneurship that constitutes a valuable resource for the on-going and future emergence of the small enterprise sector.

Canada's economic relations with Cuba, 1990 to 2010 and beyond

During the Colonial era, from Independence to 1959 and throughout the regimes of Presidents Fidel and Raúl Castro, Canada and Cuba have maintained a normal and mutually beneficial economic relationship. During the 1990s, this relationship was invaluable for Cuba as it adjusted to the loss of Soviet subsidization and to its disconnection from the former Soviet Bloc. In these years, Canadian participants were enthusiastic and optimistic about future economic relations. However, in the 2000s, this was replaced by greater realism and some skepticism concerning the possibilities for deepening economic interaction, partly because of Cuba’s rapid switching from Canada to the United States as the major source of agricultural imports after 2002. In future, Canadian-Cuban relations will be determined mainly by Cuba’s economic performance, the policy environment within which it conducts its international economic relations, and the process of normalizing Cuban-United States relations. The objective of this essay is to analyze and explain the principal features of the economic relationship between Canada and Cuba in the decades of the 1990s and the 2000s, and to explore the major determinants and possible character of this relationship in future. A range of economic dimensions is examined, including trade in goods and services (notably tourism), direct foreign investment, international migration, and development assistance. Following a brief review of the evolving relationship from the 1959 to 1990, the nature of the economic relationship between Canada and Cuba is analyzed in more detail for the 1990 to 2007 era. The future economic relationship is then explored, focusing on Cuba’s economic recovery and policy environment, and the probable impacts of normalization with the United States.

The Labour Force, Employment and Unemployment in Kenya

ABSTRACT The objective of this paper is to present a comprehensive analysis of the labour force employment patterns and unemployment in Kenya. On the basis of a 1977 Labour Force Survey, age-specific participation rates by sex, age and region were obtained and labour force projections were made. Changing patterns of employment from 1956 to 1985 were outlined, with special attention to informal sector employment. Rates of open unemployment were obtained for rural and urban areas for 1977, although the rates have likely increased. On the basis of a number of types of information, “open underemployment” in rural areas was found to be relatively low. A reconciliation of labour force information (regionally-based) with employment information (sectorally-based) was constructed, and the estimates were found to be reasonably consistent.

Revolution in the Revolution: Recent Developments in the Cuban Economy

¿Quo vadis, Cuba? La incierta senda de las reformas. Edited by José Antonio Alonso and Pavel Vidal. Madrid: Los Libros de la Catarata, 2013. Pp. 302. ISBN: 9788483198322. Cuban Economists on the Cuban Economy. Edited by Al Campbell. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2013. Pp. xvii + 337.

Cuba's Convertible Currency Debt Problem 1980-1988

79.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780813044231. Cuban Economic and Social Development: Policy Reforms and Challenges in the 21st Century. Edited by Jorge I. Domínguez, Omar Everleny Pérez Villanueva, Mayra Espina Prieto, and Lorena Barberia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pp. iii + 333.

The economic development of revolutionary Cuba; strategy and performance.

24.99 paper. ISBN: 9780674062436. Cuba since the Revolution of 1959: A Critical Assessment. By Samuel Farber. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2011. Pp. ix + 369.

Entrepreneurship, Microenterprise, and Public Policy in Cuba: Promotion, Containment, or Asphyxiation?

24.00 paper. ISBN: 9781608461394. Cuban Revelations: Behind the Scenes in Havana. By Marc Frank. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2013. Pp. iii + 327.

Cuba: From “Dollarization” to “Euroization” or “Peso Reconsolidation”?

29.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780813044651. Cuba under Raúl Castro: Assessing the Reforms. By Carmelo Mesa-Lago and Jorge Pérez-López. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2013. Pp. xv + 295.