Cuban Economics Essay -- Essays Papers

IntroductionModern Cuba is a country born of struggle. The revolutionary movement that formed the modern day government has remained in federal agency for more than forty years. Indeed, the Cuban government is perhaps one of the roughly stable governments in the region. This fact is made even more unambiguous by the recent fall of democracy in Haiti. However, the past ten years has seen a marked change in Cuban economic policy. Ostracized from the international community and faced with an embargo imposed by the linked States, Cuba has turned to various sources of economic reform in order to get through in a global market.Background (1959 1991)During the early period by and by the revolution, Cubas primary economic base was based upon one rude resource sugar (Packenham, pg. 137). Without a diversified agricultural or industrial base, Cuba was forced to become dependent on the only superpower that divided its political ideology, the Soviet Union. Indeed, Cuban trade with the Soviet Union reached a level of 69 percent in 1978, a level eq to the amount of trade conducted with the United States prior to the revolution (Packenham, pg. 139). As Cuba entered the 1980s, it was plagued with the aforementioned(prenominal) problems that had plagued it since its inception dependence on one agricultural produce and on one major trading partner. In the estimate of Carmelo Mesa-Lago, most of the Cuban growth from 1960-1984 came as a result of the $40 billion in Soviet aid (Cuban Economy, pg. 187). Leading up to the clank of the Soviet Union, the Cuban economy was in a terrible condition.In 1986, the economic growth in planned prices was only 1.4 percent compared to a planned rate of 3 percent. Labor productivity fell 1.6 per... ...orida cut (1994).Packenham, Robert A., Cuba and the USSR since 1959 What Kind of Dependency, pgs. 135-165 in Louis Horowitz ed., Cuban Communism (7th ed.), Transaction Publishers (1989).Perez-Lopez, Jorge F., Cubas Second Economy From Behind the Scenes to Center Stage, Transaction Publishers (1995).Theriot, Lawrence H., Cuba Faces the Economic Realities of the 1980s, pgs. 257-276 in Louis Horowitz ed., Cuban Communism (7th ed.), Transaction Publishers (1989).Watson, Hilbourne A., The Techno-Paradigm Shift, Globalization, and Western Hemisphere integration Trends and Tendencies Mapping Issues in the Economic and Social Evolution of the Caribbean, pgs. 59-88 in Joseph S. Tulchin, Andres Serbin, and Rafael Hernandez eds., Cuba and the Caribbean regional Issues and Trends in the Post-Cold War Era, Scholarly Resources (1997).