Beginning with the integration of Latin America into the world trading system centered on Europe and North America during the century before 1930, this 2003 book explores the successes and failures of export-led growth. Using new data on exports and a simple model to explore the relationship between exports and growth, the author pays particular attention to the question that has most concerned policy-makers in Latin America: how to transfer growth in the export sector to the rest of the economy, raising living standards and real income per head. The author examines the routes through which Latin American republics extricated themselves from the debt problem in pursuit of a new version of export-led growth. Taking its narrative from the end of the colonial epoch to the present, this book provides a comprehensive balanced portrait of the factors affecting economic development in Latin America.
In this book Victor Bulmer-Thomas uses his previously unpublished estimates of the national accounts to explore economic and social development in the five Central American republics from 1920. He examines in detail variations in economic policy between countries which help to account for differences in performance. The major political developments are woven into the analysis and linked to changes in internal and external conditions. Growth under liberal oligarchic rule in the 1920s, heavily dependent on exports of coffee and bananas, was accompanied by modest reform programmes. The 1929 depression, which hit the region hard, undermined most of the reforms and ushered in a period of dictatorial rule in all republics except Costa Rica. The Second World War, particularly after the entry of the United States, at first strengthened the dictatorships, but ultimately produced challenges to rule by authoritarian caudillos. The social upheavals accompanying the post-war export-led boom forced governments in each republic to address the question of economic, social and political reform.
This study, now in a revised and updated third edition, covers the economic history of Latin America from independence in the 1820s to the present. It stresses the differences between Latin American countries while recognizing the external influences to which the whole region has been subject. Victor Bulmer-Thomas notes the failure of the region to close the gap in living standards between it and the United States and explores the reasons. He also examines the new paradigm taking shape in Latin America since the debt crisis of the 1980s and asks whether this new economic model will be able to bring the growth and improvement in equity that the region desperately needs. This third edition contains a wealth of new material that draws on the new research in the area in the past ten years.
This book examines the economic history of the Caribbean in the two hundred years since the Napoleonic Wars and is the first analysis to span the whole region. It is divided into three parts, each centered around a particular case study: the first focuses on the nineteenth century ('The Age of Free Trade'); the second considers the period up to 1960 ('The Age of Preferences'); and the final section concerns the half century from the Cuban Revolution to the present ('The Age of Globalization'). The study makes use of a specially constructed database to observe trends across the whole region and chart the progress of nearly thirty individual countries. Its findings challenge many long-standing assumptions about the region, and its in-depth case studies shed new light on the history of three countries in particular, namely Belize, Cuba and Haiti.
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