Working Paper No. 37. Macroeconomía y crecimiento en la agenda de transformaciones del modelo económico cubano en el período pos-pandemia

Dra. Vilma Hidalgo de los Santos; Dr. Juan Triana Cordoví, Universidad de La Habana - 22-07-2022

Existen tres momentos decisivos en la historia reciente de Cuba desde la perspectiva de la historia económica; el triunfo de la Revolución de 1959, la adopción de un modelo económico socialista de dirección centralmente planificada en 19751 y; el proceso de reformas iniciado en 1990. Ese últimoa su vez puede ser estudiado en diferentes etapas y se ha caracterizado por avances y retrocesos en el orden institucional. Si bien cada uno de esos momentos ha tenido en su esencia la existencia de fallas estructurales no resueltas, los shocks externos han estado siempre en la raíz de esas transformaciones. El cambio de centro cíclico de la economía nacional, desde la economía norteamericana a la economía soviética y luego la pérdida de un centro cíclico, han condicionado en buena parte el carácter y la profundidad de las transformaciones emprendidas en cada momento.

Working Paper No. 36. La dinámica del modelo global de acumulación en las dos primeras décadas del siglo XXI: la agenda post COVID-19 y la “nueva regionalización”.

Dr. Lázaro Peña Castellanos, Centro de Investigación de Economía Internacional - 22-07-2022

Un tema que en el presente se debate en la los ámbitos económicos y políticos es el que refiere a la “nueva regionalización”. Para muchos se trata de una oportunidad de captar flujos ingentes de inversión directa, que se vaticina emigrarán desde el lejano este, ahuyentados por conflictos económicos y políticos, y que asentados en la región servirán de asideros a las economías latinoamericanas para lograr una inserción competitiva en el nuevo escenario globalizador o post globalizador. Se ha estructurado el artículo en tres partes: Primero se aborda la dinámica reciente del modelo global de acumulación1, con mayor precisión, de su eje principal, “la cadena global de valor”, CGV, en las dos últimas décadas y, a continuación, se presentan las debilidades e incertidumbres que plantea la “nueva regionalización” como cimiento para la elaboración de una agenda para el desarrollo en América Latina. Por último, se exponen algunas consideraciones referidas a la inserción externa de la economía cubana en el escenario dinámico de la economía global. Además de esta breve introducción, el artículo consta de un epígrafe conclusivo en el que se puntualizan los aspectos principales abordados a lo largo del trabajo.

Working Paper No. 35. Los retos de la política social en periodo postpandemia

Dra. Silvia Odriozola Guitart, Universidad de La Habana - 22-07-2022

Desde el triunfo de la Revolución socialista cubana, la elevación del bienestar y de la calidad de vida de las personas han sido objetivos prioritarios, a partir de una concepción del desarrollo que integra objetivos económicos y sociales. De este modo, la política social se concibe centrada en el ser humano y se impulsa con la voluntad política del Estado; caracterizándose por su visión integral y universalidad. Se reconoce y protege el derecho universal de todas las personas a recibir servicios sociales, que den respuesta a sus necesidades básicas y les permitan desarrollarse plenamente en condiciones de igualdad. Estos deben proveerse con elevada calidad, no solo desde la función y desempeño previstos, sino también por su valor percibido y su beneficio para la sociedad.

Working Paper No. 34. Agroalimentos , ¿estratégicos más allá de la pandemia?

Dr. C. Betsy Anaya; Dr. C. Anicia García - 22-07-2022

Según las estadísticas disponibles para el año 2020, el sector agropecuario contribuye directamente
con el 3% a la formación del producto interno bruto cubano (a precios de 1997). Esta escasa participación,
sin embargo, se amplía si se tiene en cuenta el efecto multiplicador de este sector a través de su aporte de materia prima a industrias tales como la azucarera, la alimentaria, la tabacalera, la de bebidas y licores, la de productos del cuero y de la madera. El producto conjunto del sector agropecuario y estas actividades conexas representa cerca del 9% del producto de la nación.Pero la importancia de este sector no puede valorarse únicamente a través de su aporte al PIB cubano. Las producciones agropecuarias están comprometidas con la alimentación de la población y las exportaciones. El aporte de la producción doméstica de origen agropecuario se estimó en 56% de la energía alimentaria y 35% de la proteína total a disposición de la población en 2020.1 Adicionalmente, Cuba realizó ese año importaciones de alimentos por 1 912 millones de dólares, lo que representa 26% de las importaciones de bienes del país. En cuanto a la participación del sector en la generación de ingresos en divisas, 36% de los ingresos por exportaciones de bienes son de origen agropecuario. En particular, los productos del azúcar aportan 30% de las agroexportaciones totales, con una tremenda contracción con relación a su participación histórica.

Working Paper No. 10. Can Cuban state companies pay higher wages?

Ricardo González Aguila y Leandro Zipitría - 04-06-2020

Cuban state companies pay considerably lower wages than other Latin American companies. In 2018 the average salary was 777 Cuban pesos (CUP) per month, about $30 on the CADECA2 exchange rate (ONEI, 2018). Domestic literature generally accepts that wages in Cuba are low because business productivity is also low, and that any attempt to increase them without productive support would unleash an inflationary spiral. At the same time, it is claimed that this relationship is bidirectional and that low wages make it difficult to stimulate labour productivity (Vidal, 2008; Galtés, 2016; Moreal, 2018).

Working Paper No. 9. Public–private partnerships in Cuba, challenges and opportunities

Dr. C. Juan Triana Cordoví - 20-05-2020

Public–private partnerships (PPPs) may be defined in general terms as agreements between public and private actors for the supply of goods, services and/or infrastructure. They may also act as an “assembly tool” that is able to unite the interests of different sectors around a single goal and produce joint action that activates the country’s full capacity in order to achieve economic transformation.

Working Paper No. 8. The external integration and growth of the Cuban economy

Dr. Lázaro Peña Castellanos y Dra. Carola Salas Couce - 14-05-2020

In conditions governed by a global accumulation model, external integration and growth are two interrelated aspects of development. This work aims to quantitatively reveal and describe these relationships in the Cuban economy and to make recommendations for designing economic strategies and policies for Cuba, where overlapping structural and contextual factors hinder external integration and economic growth.

Working Paper No. 7. Cuban agricultural exports: Potential for integration into global value chains towards America. Background and current situation

Anicia García Álvarez, Betsy Anaya Cruz - 10-03-2020

Cuba’s need for its export sector to take off is a perennially valid and extremely important area of discussion, given Cuba’s critical dependence on its external sector.

For a fairly prolonged period of the country's history, agricultural exports were fundamental due to their external importance: sugar and related products were the country’s main exportable product until the beginning of the 21st century, accounting for almost 81% of Cuban exports of goods in 1958 and close to 32% in 2002. That year marked the beginning of the restructuring and resizing of the Cuban sugar sector and was the last time sugar – and agricultural exports in general – dominated the export picture in Cuba. Subsequently, agro‑exports plummeted until they reached a relatively stable level from 2007 to 2014, hovering at around 16% of goods exported. Since 2015, the relative share of these exports has grown, as exports from mining and other products have fallen. As a decisive sector in Cuba's integration into the global market, far from having exhausted its possibilities, there may be opportunities for agriculture in the current international context.

Working Paper No. 6. Comparative analysis of energy indicator changes in Cuba and Spain from 1990 to 2016

Emilio Cerdá, Diego Rodríguez, Miguel Sebastián - 05-02-2020

This work aims to provide a comparative analysis of the changes in certain basic energy indicators in Cuba and Spain for the 1990 to 2016 period. A period of profound changes in energy generation technologies around the world, it was characterised by two important events: an explosion of renewable electricity generation technologies (wind and solar); and significant falls in the generation costs associated with renewable technologies (investment, operation and maintenance). Almost non-existent in 1990, by 2016 renewables were already clear competitors to other generation technologies. In this process, all countries initially opted to provide significant regulatory support for these technologies (in the form of grants). This support was withdrawn across the board once the transition through the learning curve made them competitive.

Working Paper No. 5. The Cuban economy’s transformation and the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement with the European Union

Jordi Bacaria, UAB, CIDOB. Eloi Serrano UPF, CIDOB - 30-01-2020

As the objectives of the PDCA establish, the EU's proposal for cooperation with Cuba involves accompanying the process of updating the Cuban economy and society by providing a global framework for dialogue and cooperation. This cooperation framework concentrates on the multilateral aspects of Cuba’s trade and international projection, with particular emphasis on modernising its economy. The PDCA refers to “updating” and modernisation is used only to refer for example to public administration, transport and customs. However, the council’s joint proposal (2016) says that the “relationship will be geared to supporting the modernisation of the Cuban economy and society".

Working Paper No. 4. The competitiveness of Cuban tourism: anything more than sun, beaches and son music?

Mario Raúl de la Peña, David Martín-Barroso, Jacobo Núñez et. al. - 21-01-2020

While Cuba is a traditional tourist destination in the Caribbean region, the current configuration of Cuban tourism, as well as its economic importance, began with the fall of the Iron Curtain and the end of subsidised goods exchanges with the USSR. The tightening of the United States’ economic embargo following the Cuban Democracy Act was a further factor in the Cuban economy’s collapse in the early 1990s. It is in this context that the international tourism sector has since 1989 been seen as one of the few productive alternatives capable of mitigating the fall in income caused by that collapse and, in particular, that of the sugar sector, one of its main engines up to that time (Fitzgerald, 1994; Pérez-López, 1994; Simon, 1995; Martín de Holan and Phillips, 1997; Mundet and Salinas, 2000).

Working Paper No. 3. Revisiting the agrarian question in Cuba (1959–2018): A peasant alternative in the global era?

Elisa Botella-Rodríguez, Profesora del Departamento de Economía e Historia Económica - 17-12-2019

The issue of land has not always been widely debated in Latin American academic, social and political circles. But it has long been essential for understanding many of the socio-economic and political transformations of the 20th and 21st centuries. The 20th century was the century of agrarian reforms in Latin America, many of which had important antecedents in the peasants’ struggles of the first half of the 20th century (Martín Cano et al., 2007). Since the end of the 20th century, the rebirth and transnationalisation of social movements and the rise of left-wing governments in Latin America brought agrarian issues and access to land back into the (political and social) conversation. Agrarian reforms were brought back to the political agenda in major Latin American countries from the bottom up but later received top-down support from the so-called Pink Tide governments. Thus, far from being an anachronism, the movements of landless workers and peasants in Latin America have emerged as “modern and dynamic” social actors that in many settings play key roles in opposing the prevailing development agenda (Petras and Veltmeyer, 2001).

Working Paper No. 2. New implications of ICT: The growth of the collaborative economy

Cipriano Quirós Romero, - 10-12-2019

This working document (WD) expands on the paper of the same name presented at the Europe-Cuba Forum seminar held in the University of Havana in February 2019 as part of the first themed unit "Cooperation for economic reforms and sustainable development". Given the novelty of the Collaborative Economy (CE) and the plurality of visions arising from it in recent years, this WD focuses on presenting how to define and delimit these activities.

Working Paper No.1. Economic reform in Cuba: Stuck in the middle

José Antonio Alonso, Pavel Vidal - 28-11-2019

Over the last decade, the Cuban economy has embarked on a diverse series of reforms and repeatedly imposed stabilisation measures that have varied in field and scope. Many were necessary responses to critical situations caused by macroeconomic imbalances; others sought to relaunch the Cuban economy and set it on a path of sustained growth for the future. Both objectives – achieving stability and promoting growth – have inspired many of the authorities' reforms in an institutional and political framework that is remarkably intransigent and resistant to change. The achievements made in this process remain for the time being highly precarious.