Note The quantitative expansion of self-employment from 150,000 to nearly 600,000 licensed cuentapropistas between 2010 and 2018 during the presidency of Raúl Castro can be celebrated given its expansion of economic freedom, the provision of job opportunities, greater productivity and efficiency, and a markedly higher quality of goods and services for those who can afford […]

The self-selection problem implies that rational agents optimize their decision to participate in different markets. Roy (1951) was the first to address this problem, analyzing how individuals optimize their decision depending on their skills. In the case of migration, self-selection not only depends on the unobservable characteristics of an individual such as ability, motivation or […]

Cuba is facing a demographic storm that will stress its economy and society: its large baby boom generation is reaching retirement age and fertility is extremely low. While this is not an original observation (Hollerbach, 1980; Díaz-Briquets, 2015 and 2016), this paper uses single-year age-distribution data to show the seriousness of the situation. Unlike previous […]

Between 2010 and 2015, legal self-employment in Cuba (known locally as cuentapropismo) grew more than three-fold (Feinberg 2016; Ritter and Henken 2015). Now, more than 500,000 Cubans are licensed workers in 123 categories of small-business (e.g., food and clothing sales, accommodation rentals geared towards foreigners, tech/commodity repairs, etc.), a historic shift in a strict state […]