Notes1 This study models the debt dynamics currently at play in the Venezuelan economy that are increasing the short-run risks of a debt crisis in that country. The inevitable interruption of subsidized oil exports that would result from such a crisis could deal a devastating blow to the Cuban economy, as well as the rest […]
Transition Policies Twenty Years Later: Lessons for the Case of Cuba
Notes1 Economic outcomes have differed widely across the countries that have transitioned away from centrally planned economies. Since 1989, the centrally planned economies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have moved to dismantle centralized control and allow market mechanisms to allocate resources to differing degrees and at different paces. This paper looks back […]
Cuba: Economic Growth, Aging, and Long-Term Fiscal Sustainability
Notes1 Social security is at the center of the economic debate in most of the world. The intense population aging occurring in many advanced countries of Europe and Asia is causing social security finances to be under severe pressure, threatening fiscal sustainability. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the presence of relative young populations has […]
Cuba: Economic Growth and International Linkages:Challenges for Measurement and Vulnerabilities in a Bimonetary Economy
Notes1 This paper assesses sources of economic growth in Cuba during the period 1990–2008, with the purpose of identifying factors behind long-term growth dynamics, as well as those explaining short-term growth developments. The period chosen covers what is known as the “Special” period after the collapse of the Soviet Union (1990–1995), as well as the […]
A Primer on Currency Unification and Exchange Rate Policy in Cuba: Lessons from Exchange Rate Unification in Transition Economies
Notes1 Since the second half of the 1990s the Central Bank of Cuba (BCC) has operated a dual monetary and exchange rate system, in which a largely convertible currency (the convertible Cuban peso, CUC) coexists with the “official” non-convertible currency (the Cuban peso, CUP). The existence of dual markets for currency and associated dual exchange […]