The engendering of the spirit of entrepreneurship in a population is one of the most essential prerequisites for successful transition. The limited reappearance of self-employment in the Cuban economy has brought the question of the future of Cuban entrepreneurship under a new light. Almost immediately after economic reforms legalizing some forms of self-employment were passed, […]

Over the last 38 years, quantitative and institutional information on the Cuban economy have typically been fragmentary and incomplete. The serious observer or investigator must reconcile his or her understanding of what is happening with reports that are vague and contradictory. That is why formal or scientific investigation of the Cuban economy is very difficult […]

Notes1 “Llegaron los días difíciles actuales en que predominan las carencias materiales, se produce una indeseada diferenciación social y aumentan las ilegalidades ….. La lista de los problemas es enorme. Las limitaciones en alimentación, vestido, calzado, medios de higiene y medicamentos; los apagones y la carencia de combustible doméstico; las graves dificultades en transporte, vivienda […]

More than fifty years ago the distinguished Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek in his brilliant book The Road to Serfdom wrote the following statement: “The coming of socialism was to be the leap from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom. It was to bring ‘economic freedom,’ without which the politi­cal freedom already gained […]

In the decade after 1958, hundreds of thousands of Cubans left Cuba. Among those who exited were many highly skilled workers who had managed Cuba’s 161 sugar factories. Although the physical capi­tal left behind remained intact, the human capital embodied in each of the emigrants was lost to the Cuban sugar industry forever. Revolutionary leaders […]