Xavier Tafunell

On the Origins of ISI: The Latin American Cement Industry, 1900–30

This article explores the achievements of industrialisation in Latin America in the period before 1930, the date traditionally considered to be the start of the ISI process. It analyses the development of a basic industrial sector, the cement industry, which was driven by a natural substitution of imports. It quantifies the expansion of demand in each of the countries in the region, and then moves on to consider the growth of the industry in Latin America in the period between 9oo00 and 1930. Although cement consumption grew briskly, particularly in the most underdeveloped economies, disparities in levels of consumption and production among countries in the region continued to be very great in 1930, while the gap between Latin America and the most industrialised economies grew slightly.

Los beneficios empresariales en España, 1880–1981. Estimación de un índice anual del excedente de la gran empresa

espanolEn este articulo se presenta una serie anual de beneficios de la empresa en Espana para el periodo 1880-1981. El indice elaborado es altamente representativo de la gran empresa de nuestro pais y constituye la primera estimacion anual de renta empresarial que abarca un periodo muy largo. Los datos muestran que la evolucion de beneficios se guio por tendencias de larga duracion y por fluctuaciones de corto plazo. Ambos movimientos se acompasaron a los del producto total y del sector industrial. Los datos sugieren, asimismo, que las fluctuaciones de los beneficios estuvieron muy estrechamente correlacionadas con las de la inversion EnglishThis article presents a series of annual Spanish corporates profits for the period 1880-1981. The index estimated represents very well spanish big firms, and it provides for the first time annual measurement on profits for a very long period. The data suggests that profits experienced long trends and short-term fluctuations. Both movements are related with whole economy and industrial dynamics. The data equally suggests that profits fluctuations were extremely correlated with investment fluctuations.

La inversión en equipo de transporte de América Latina, 1890-1930: una estimación basada en la demanda de importaciones

The development of modern transport systems over the first economic globalisation has been recognised as a key instrument for inserting Latin-America into the international economy. However, to this date, there was no quantitative global and detailed evaluation of the amounts invested on transport equipment in the region. This article covers this gap supplying homogeneous and consistent annual series for the period 1890-1930 for all the sovereign countries of the time. It also describes the historical profile of the Latin-American series and analyses the differences across the national series. The large disparities in the levels of investment per capita observed reflect the diverse degree of economic development attained by the Latin- American republics over the period. KEY Classification-JEL: L62, L91, N16, N76

La revolución eléctrica en América Latina: una reconstrucción cuantitativa del proceso de electrificación hasta 1930

Latin America participated in the electric revolution which profoundly transformed the most developed Western economies between 1880 and 1930. The qualitative empirical evidence shows that Latin American electrification began with little delay compared to those economies. This article provides new quantitative evidence consisting of annual series about a reliable indicator of the degree of electrification of the Latin American nations. The database built shows that towards 1930 electricity consumption per inhabitant in Latin America was far below that of most advanced economies, and only Latin American leaders in the electrification process had reached power consumption levels similar to the European late comers. Unlike other newly industrializing economies, the region was not able to quickly incorporate new technology to overcome their backwardness.