The Misery of Cuban Merchandise Exports and the Sustainability of the Balance of Payments Ernesto Hernández-Catá The evolution of Cuba’s merchandise exports since the early 1990s is a source of deep concern. The value of exports stagnated during the 1990s and fell in relation to GDP, mostly because of the collapse in sugar exports. The […]

Cuba’s Petroleum Trade Statistics and the Impact of Cutbacks in Venezuelan Oil.[1] In a 2009 article, Jorge Perez-Lopez and Carmelo Mesa Lago suggested that Cuba’s official GDP data involved “…discontinuities, obfuscation and puzzles”. Something similar can be said about the statistics on petroleum trade published by the official Cuban statistical agency, ONEI. Cuban data for […]

The Exchange of Doctors for Oil and the Acceleration of Cuba’s GDP Growth since the Turn of the Century. [1] In an important article, John Devereux recently provided a thorough and critical examination of Cuban statistics on aggregate production.[2] Among other things, he drew attention to the sharp increase in Cuba’s real GDP growth (as […]

Cuba’s Macroeconomic Policy’s Aggressive Shift towards Expansion Ernesto Hernández-Catá February 2018   Macroeconomic policies I Cuba were generally restrained during most of the period from 1994 to 2012. For the past several years, however, these policies have turned aggressively toward expansion. Over the period 2013 to 2016 the budget deficit ballooned, government expenditure increased sharply, […]