Carolina Román

Auge Y Ocaso Del Carbón Mineral En Uruguay. Un Análisis Histórico Desde Fines Del Siglo Xix Hasta La Actualidad

El analisis del auge y ocaso del carbon mineral como fuente energetica en Uruguay aporta informacion para entender las caracteristicas de la transicion al petroleo. Este trabajo presenta una serie de consumo de carbon mineral en Uruguay desde fines del siglo XIX hasta la actualidad (1879-2011). La «era del carbon» se ubica en las primeras decadas del siglo XX. La demanda efectiva de cuatro sectores contribuye a explicar el comportamiento del carbon como el resultado de diferentes trayectorias que caracterizan el patron uruguayo de retrocesos y recuperacion. Ademas, se discuten tres factores explicativos —precios y fletes, innovaciones tecnologicas y aspectos institucionales— que estan detras de las razones que impulsaron a los actores estrategicos a adoptar fuentes energeticas modernas.

Contract Enforcement, Investment and Growth in Uruguay since 1870

Institutions and their quality are central concepts in the recent development and institutional economics literatures. Our hypothesis is that inadequate contract enforcement has hindered investment and, in consequence, indirectly has had a negative effect on Uruguay’s long-term growth performance. We first review the main concepts and the approaches to define and measure the quality of contract enforcement. We then introduce one measure that has the advantages of being measurable into the past and not depending on subjective judgments; namely, the “contract intensive money�? (CIM) indicator proposed by Clague et al. (1999). Using our long series for the CIM indicator, and extending key macroeconomic variables backwards to 1870, we are able to estimate a structural model to explore the plausibility of our hypothesis. In the estimation, based on the seemingly unrelated regressions (SUR) method, we find support for the thesis that the quality of contract enforcement influences growth through its impact on investment. Put differently, our results suggest that poor contract enforcement played a significant role at the root of Uruguay’s underperformance, and in its experience of (relative) long-run decline.