Mientras me preparaba para obtener mi doctorado en economía en 1971, le pregunté un día a Finis Welch, el director del programa, qué le parecía que yo hiciera mi tesis sobre la economía cubana. Finis me sugirió que fuera a ver a Carlos Díaz-Alejandro a la Universidad de Yale donde él era profesor para discutir […]

The USITC report, The Economic Impact of U.S. Sanctions with Respect to Cuba, uses the gravity model as the basis for its estimates of the impact of lifting U.S. sanctions on Cuba. I will focus my comments on the study’s use of this model. Let me say at the outset that, while I think that […]

A decade after the beginning of political transformations in the former socialist countries in Eastern Europe, substantial diferences still remain in the level of political freedom and economic liberalization reached by each one. Great expectations born at the end of the communist system have not yet come true in some countries. While in countries like […]

I appreciate the opportunity to offer my observations on this important contribution to the body of research on the Cuban economy and U.S.-Cuban economic relations. Because of my work in the field of agricultural economics, I feel best able to comment on the portions of this report dealing with agriculture. For that reason, while I […]

Notes1 Eventually the economic regime in Cuba will fall. It will have to wait until Fidel Castro leaves the scene, but then the economic regime, and most likely the political regime, will fall quickly. The world, and especially the United States, must be ready for that time. It is the contention of this paper that […]