Cuba’s economic policy is firmly based on ideological grounds.  Consequently it is not wholly appropriate to evaluate current reforms and its growth strategy in the usual terms for transition economies that emphasize efficiency, the role of markets and ownership rights, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (2013). Nonetheless, taking into account the ideological context and […]

Ever since the demise of the Soviet Union and the subsequent demise of Cuba’s sugar industry, it has been apparent that the island has had a hard time being competitive in world markets. Beyond nickel and some remnants of sugar, it has had little in the way of goods to export. And its tourism has […]

Cuba is a low recipient of foreign investment.  After a surge in 1994-2000 following the demise of the Soviet Union, foreign investment has played a very small role in the economy.[i]   Lamentably foreign investment data are not published either by the Cuban government or by countries of origin. Nonetheless national income accounts provide bleak indicators of […]

For the last two years I have written about the annual letter of the Cuban Council of the High Priests of Ifá (Consejo Cubano De Sacerdotes Mayores De Ifá), the practitioners of traditional religion brought over from West Africa with the slave trade and now naturalized as a powerful indigenous religion throughout the Caribbean and […]

The “Official Note” was written in a characteristically defensive style, with stern warnings that the strategy will exclude the use of “shock therapies”. But never mind. The important message was clear: Cuba is going to implement “a timeline for measures which will lead to monetary and currency exchange unification.” The inefficient, absurd and discriminatory multiple […]