In the centuries before the Spanish conquest, the Bolivian space was among the most highly urbanised and complex societies in the Americas. In contrast, in the early 21 st century Bolivia is one of the poorest economies on the continent. According to Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson (2002), this disparity between precolonial opulence and current poverty would make Bolivia a perfect example of "reversal of fortune" (RF). This hypothesis, however, has been criticised for oversimplifying long-term development processes by "compressing" history (Austin, 2008). In the case of Bolivia, a comprehensive description and explanation of the RF process would require a global approach to the entire postcolonial period, which has been prevented so far by the lack of quantitative information for the period before 1950. This paper aims to fill that gap by providing new income per capita estimates for Bolivia in 1890-1950 and a point guesstimate for the mid-nineteenth century. Our figures indicate that divergence has not been a persistent feature of Bolivian economic history. Instead, it was concentrated in the 19 th century and the second half of the 20 th century, and it was actually during the latter that the country joined the ranks of the poorest economies in Latin America. By contrast, during the first half of the 20 th century, the country converged with both the industrialised and the richest Latin American economies. The Bolivian postcolonial era cannot therefore be described as one of sustained divergence. Instead, the Bolivian RF was largely the combined result of post-independence stagnation and the catastrophic crises of the late 20 th century.

Abstract:The new estimates of the Maddison Project show that GDP per capita ratio at purchasing power parity (ppp) between Bolivia and Finland has changed from 0.68 ca. 1850 to 0.16 in 2015; similarly, that between Chile and Norway from 0.65 to 0.28. The aim of this article is to present a review of the literature and available quantitative evidence to understand how these extreme differences became possible between countries with similarly enormous natural resource endowments. Specifically, the article seeks to: (a) identify some stylized facts that may help understand the divergence between Andean and Nordic countries; (b) identify key historical processes that explain the divergent effect of natural resource abundance in Andean and Nordic economies. In order to achieve these objectives, four topics are covered: GDPpc, population, trade and taxation. The analysis comprises three Nordic countries (Finland, Norway and Sweden) and three Andean countries (Bolivia, Chile and Peru) from the mid-Nineteenth Century to present day. The sample size, time span covered and thematic approach provide new evidence regarding previous work.

permitted to increase intraregional trade between South American countries. The paper proves that intraregional trade during the years of world wars and the Great Depression achieved some of the highest levels verified throughout the entire 20th century, but tended to lost ground after these episodes. It also proves that -with the exception of some Brazilian exports-most of intraregional trade presented the same features than global trade: a high concentration on few products of very low value-added. The paper suggests that beyond the rhetoric of regional integration and the signature of different trade agreements, these features persisted from the 1950s to the late 1980s. This finding certainly asks for an explanation in a time when intraregional trade is again at the forefront of the economic strategy of several South American countries.

Since the 1920 discovery of oil in Bolivia, the country has experimented with varying systems of private control, monopoly state ownership and even mixed state and private ownership/rental of petroleum and gas fields. The aim of our analysis is to explain why these varying patterns of ownership occurred over time and to describe how they affected production in this industry. The analysis suggests that nationalizations have been successful insofar as they took advantage of previous private investment which, meanwhile, underscores the success of the legislation for opening up access

This paper offers a long-term comparative study of Bolivian public finances using a new detailed database. First, it shows that Bolivian government revenues and expenditures were particularly small and volatile until the 1980s. Second, it stresses that, whereas the relative importance of social expenditure has grown constantly since the late 1930s, public revenues have always had an unbalanced structure. Finally, it confirms that budget deficits have been constant, at times reaching levels that were especially damaging for the overall economy. This suggests that the potential redistributive impact of Bolivian public finances was not necessarily (or not only) hindered by the lack of an explicit commitment towards redistributive expenses, but by an extreme vulnerability in the revenue side.