Author Archives: Catá Backer Larry

ASCE (ASSOCIATION FOR THE STUDY OF THE CUBAN ECONOMY), A Selection of Papers from the 2018 Annual Conference

The complete set of papers is here:  ASCE Conference Proceedings for 2018.

A complete set of all the papers from the annual ASCE conferences can be found here:  ASCE Conference Proceedings

Cuba: Los Retos Económicos del Gobierno de Miguel Díaz-Canel Omar Everleny Pérez Villanueva PDF version
Cuba 2018: Entre la Continuidad y la Oportunidad Dagoberto Valdés Hernández PDF version
Cuban Peso Unification: Managed Rate and Monetary Analysis Luis R. Luis PDF version
La Agricultura en Cuba: Transformaciones, Resultados y Retos Armando Nova González PDF version
Principal Elements of Agricultural Reforms in Transition Economies: Implications For Cuba? Mario A. González-Corzo PDF version
Cuba’s Economic Liberalization and The Perils to Security and Legality Vidal Romero PDF version
Growth and Policy-Induced Distortions in The Cuban Economy: an Econometric Approach Ernesto Hernández-Catá PDF version
Comparing The Quality of Education in Pre- and Post-Revolutionary Cuba Using U.S. Labor Market Outcomes Luis Locay and John Devereux PDF version
The Global Economy and Cuba: Stasis and Hard Choices Larry Catá Backer PDF version
Five Keys to Presidential Change in Cuba Arturo López-Levy and Rolf Otto Niederstrasser PDF version
Cuba’s Political and Economic Arteriosclerosis – It Is Not Just The Castros Gary H. Maybarduk PDF version
Cuban Tourism Industry in The Eye of The Storm Emilio Morales PDF version
Experiencias de Cuentapropistas Ted A. Henken PDF version
Cuban Demography and Economic Consequences Humberto Barreto PDF version
     
“The Revenge of The Jealous Bureaucrat”: A Critical Analysis of Cuba’s New Rules For Cuentapropistas Ted A. Henken PDF version

 

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ASSOCIATION FOR THE STUDY OF THE CUBAN ECONOMY, PAPERS AND PROCEEDINGS OF THE TWENTY-FIFTH ANNUAL MEETING, JULY 30-AUGUST 1, 2015

ASCE: Cuba in Transition: Volume 25

Papers and Proceedings of the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting,  July 30-August 1, 2015

All papers are hyperlinked to the ASCE Website and can be seen in PDF format.

wwwPreface

Conference Program

Table of Contents

Reflections on the State of the Cuban Economy Carlos Seiglie

¿Es la Economía o es la Política?: La Ilusoria Inversión de K. Marx Alexis Jardines

Los Grandes Retos del Deshielo Emilio Morales

Preparing for a Full Restoration of Economic Relations between Cuba and the United States Ernesto Hernández-Catá

Economic Consequences of Cuba-U.S. Reconciliation Luis R. Luis

El Sector Privado y el Turismo en Cuba Ante un Escenario de Relaciones con Estados Unidos José Luis Perelló Cabrera

The Logical Fallacy of the New U.S.-Cuba Policy and its Security Implications José Azel

Why Cuba is a State Sponsor of Terror Joseph M. Humire

The National Security Implications of the President’s New Cuba Policy Ana Quintana

Factores Atípicos de las Relaciones Internacionales Económicas de Cuba: El Rol de los Servicios Cubanos de Inteligencia Enrique García

Entrepreneurship in Post-Socialist Economies: Lessons for Cuba Mario A. González-Corzo

When Reforms Are Not: Recent Policy Development in Cuba and the Implications for the Future Enrique S. Pumar

Revisiting the Seven Threads in the Labyrinth of the Cuban Revolution Luis Martínez-Fernández

La Economía Política del Embargo o Bloqueo Interno Jorge A. Sanguinetty

Establishing Ground Rules for Political Risk Claims about Cuba José Gabilondo

Resolving U.S. Expropriation Claims Against Cuba: A Very Modest Proposal Matías F. Travieso-Díaz

U.S.-Cuba BIT: A Guarantee in Reestablishing Trade Relations Rolando Anillo, Esq.

Lessons from Cuba’s Party-Military Relations and a Tale of “Two Fronts Line” in North Korea Jung-chul Lee

The Military, Ideological Frameworks and Familial Marxism: A Comment on Jung-chul Lee,“A Lesson from Cuba’s Party-Military Relations and a Tale of ‘Two Fronts Line’ in North Korea” Larry Catá Backer

Hybrid Economy in Cuba and North Korea: Key to the Longevity of Two Regimes and Difference Young-Ja Park

Historical Progress Of U.S.-Cuba Relationship: Implication for U.S.-North Korea Case Wootae Lee

Estimating Disguised Unemployment in Cuba Ernesto Hernández-Catá

Reliable Partners, Not Carpetbaggers Domingo Amuchástegui

Foreign Investment in Cuba’s “Updating” of Its Economic Model Jorge F. Pérez-López

Global Corporate Social Responsibility (GCSR) Standards With Cuban Characteristics: What Normalization Means for Transnational Enterprise Activity in Cuba Larry Catá Backer

Bienal de la Habana, 1984: Art Curators as State Researchers Paloma Checa-Gismero

Luchas y Éxitos de las Diásporas Cubana Lisa Clarke

A Framework for Assessing the Impact of U.S. Restrictions on Telecommunication Exports to Cuba Larry Press

Measures to Deal with an Aging Population: International Experiences and Lessons for Cuba Sergio Díaz-Briquets

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CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS, ASCE 2014

The papers presented at the 2014 Conference of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy are now available.

Cuba in Transition: Volume 24: Papers and Proceedings of the Twenty-Fourth Annual Meeting.

The papers listed below are hypewr-linked to directly to their respective file on the ASCE web site.

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Publication of the Papers from the 2013 Conference of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy

 

The proceedings of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy’s 23rd Annual Meeting entitled  “Reforming Cuba?” (August 1–3, 2013) is now available. The presentations have now been published by ASCE  at http://www.ascecuba.org/.

The presentations are listed below and linked to their sources in the ASCE Web Site.

ASCE_logo_220

 Preface

Panorama de las reformas económico-sociales y sus efectos en Cuba, Carmelo Mesa-Lago

Crítica a las reformas socioeconómicas raulistas, 2006–2013, Rolando H. Castañeda

Nuevo tratamiento jurídico-penal a empresarios extranjeros: ¿parte de las reformas en Cuba?, René Gómez Manzano

Reformas en Cuba: ¿La última utopía?, Emilio Morales

Potentials and Pitfalls of Cuba’s Move Toward Non-Agricultural Cooperatives, Archibald R. M. Ritter

Possible Political Transformations in Cuba in the Light of Some Theoretical and Empirically Comparative Elements, Vegard Bye

Las reformas en Cuba: qué sigue, qué cambia, qué falta, Armando Chaguaceda and Marie Laure Geoffray

Cuba: ¿Hacia dónde van las “reformas”?, María C. Werlau

Resumen de las recomendaciones del panel sobre las medidas que debe adoptar Cuba para promover el crecimiento económico y nuevas oportunidades, Lorenzo L. Pérez

Immigration and Economics: Lessons for Policy, George J. Borjas

The Problem of Labor and the Construction of Socialism in Cuba: On Contradictions in the Reform of Cuba’s Regulations for Private Labor Cooperatives, Larry Catá Backer

Possible Electoral Systems in a Democratic Cuba, Daniel Buigas

The Legal Relations Between the U.S. and Cuba, Antonio R. Zamora

Cambios en la política migratoria del Gobierno cubano: ¿Nuevas reformas?, Laritza Diversent

The Venezuela Risks for PetroCaribe and Alba Countries, Gabriel Di Bella, Rafael Romeu and Andy Wolfe

Venezuela 2013: Situación y perspectivas socioeconómicas, ajustes insuficientes, Rolando H. Castañeda

Cuba: The Impact of Venezuela, Domingo Amuchástegui

Should the U.S. Lift the Cuban Embargo? Yes; It Already Has; and It Depends!, Roger R. Betancourt

Cuba External Debt and Finance in the Context of Limited Reforms, Luis R. Luis

Cuba, the Soviet Union, and Venezuela: A Tale of Dependence and Shock, Ernesto Hernández-Catá

Competitive Solidarity and the Political Economy of Invento, Roberto I. Armengol

The Fist of Lázaro is the Fist of His Generation: Lázaro Saavedra and New Cuban Art as Dissidence, Emily Snyder

La bipolaridad de la industria de la música cubana: La concepción del bien común y el aprovechamiento del mercado global, Jesse Friedman

Biohydrogen as an Alternative Energy Source for Cuba, Melissa Barona, Margarita Giraldo and Seth Marini

Cuba’s Prospects for a Military Oligarchy, Daniel I. Pedreira

Revolutions and their Aftermaths: Part One — Argentina’s Perón and Venezuela’s Chávez, Gary H. Maybarduk

Cuba’s Economic Policies: Growth, Development or Subsistence?, Jorge A. Sanguinetty

Cuba and Venezuela: Revolution and Reform, Silvia Pedraza and Carlos A. Romero Mercado

Mercado inmobiliario en Cuba: Una apertura a medias, Emilio Morales and Joseph Scarpaci

Estonia’s Post-Soviet Agricultural Reforms: Lessons for Cuba, Mario A. González-Corzo

Cuba Today: Walking New Roads? Roberto Veiga González

From Collision to Covenant: Challenges Faced by Cuba’s Future Leaders, Lenier González Mederos

Proyecto “DLíderes”, José Luis Leyva Cruz

Notes for the Cuban Transition, Antonio Rodiles and Alexis Jardines

Economistas y politólogos, blogueros y sociólogos: ¿Y quién habla de recursos naturales? Yociel Marrero Báez

Cambio cultural y actualización económica en Cuba: internet como espacio contencioso, Soren Triff

From Nada to Nauta: Internet Access and Cyber-Activism in A Changing Cuba, Ted A. Henken and Sjamme van de Voort

Technology Domestication, Cultural Public Sphere, and Popular Music in Contemporary Cuba, Nora Gámez Torres

Internet and Society in Cuba, Emily Parker

Poverty and the Effects on Aversive Social Control, Enrique S. Pumar

Cuba’s Long Tradition of Health Care Policies: Implications for Cuba and Other Nations, Rodolfo J. Stusser

A Century of Cuban Demographic Interactions and What They May Portend for the Future, Sergio Díaz-Briquets

The Rebirth of the Cuban Paladar: Is the Third Time the Charm? Ted A. Henken

Trabajo por cuenta propia en Cuba hoy: trabas y oportunidades, Karina Gálvez Chiú

Remesas de conocimiento, Juan Antonio Blanco

Diaspora Tourism: Performance and Impact of Nonresident Nationals on Cuba’s Tourism Sector, María Dolores Espino

The Path Taken by the Pharmaceutical Association of Cuba in Exile, Juan Luis Aguiar Muxella and Luis Ernesto Mejer Sarrá

Appendix A: About the Authors

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Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, 2011 Conference Proceedings

ASCE, the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy has just published the Proceedings of its 2011 Conference. The Proceeding include a wealth of information and analyses. All articles for 2011 and indeed all the Conference proceedings for the last 21 years are freely available on the ASCE Web Site

Below is the Table of Contents for the 2011 Proceedings with all articles hyper-linked to the original ASCE source.

Preface

Conference Program

Table of Contents

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POLITICAL ECONOMY OF CHANGE IN CUBA

A three-day international symposium held under the auspices of the Bildner Center at City University of New York. and spearheaded by its Director Mauricio Font, was held in March 2011. It was entitled Cuba Futures: Past and Present, and focused on the dynamics of change in contemporary Cuba—the politics, culture, economy.

A selection of the papers on the Cuban economy have been published on the web by the Bildner Centre.  The are all hyperlinked here: Political Economy of Change in Cuba, Bildner Center, CUNY New York. A Table of Contents is presented below. Of special interest are the essays by the analysts from the Centro de Estudios sobre la Economia Cubana, Armando Nova, Camila Piñeiro, Pavel Vidal Alejandro and Omar Everleny Pérez .

Table of Contents

Preface                                                                                                                                   xi

1 La actualización del modelo económico cubano, Omar Everleny Pérez Villanueva

2 Forecasting Cuba’s Economy: 2, 5, and 20 Years, Emily Morris*    10

3 Las restricciones de divisas en la economía cubana, 2010, Pavel Vidal Alejandro 19

4 New Forms of Enterprise in Cuba’s Changing Economy, Camila Piñeiro Harnecker    43

5 Valoración del impacto de las medidas más recientes en los resultados de la agricultura en Cuba, Armando Nova González     63

6 Las nuevas transformaciones en la agricultura cubana: éxitos y desafíos, Reynaldo Jiménez Guethón           81

7 Cuba y el turismo norteamericano. Analisis de potencialidades y de impactos en la región caribeña, Gerardo González Núñez and Roberto Orro Fernández         9

78 Tourism in Cuba: Barriers to Economic Growth and Development Hilary Becker     117

9 Cuba: A Services-Centered Survival and Development Pattern, Alberto Gabriele        133

10 Theoretical Foundations of a Future Privatization in Cuba: The Property and Ownership Paradigm, Frank-Christian Hansel   155

11 Globalization and the Socialist Multinational: Cuba and ALBA’s Grannacional Projects at the Intersection of Business and Human Rights, Larry Catá Backer         183

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Larry Catá Backer, GLOBALIZATION AND THE SOCIALIST MULTINATIONAL: CUBA AND ALBA’S GRANNACIONAL PROJECTS AT THE INTERSECTION OF BUSINESS AND HUMAN RIGHTS

At the 2010 Conference of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, Larry Catá Backer  presented a challenging and insightful  analysis of the new forms of socialist multinational enterprise being used by Cuba and Venezuela from the perspective of how practices of state bartering of labor may run counter to emerging global frameworks for human rights and economic activity.

” That collision is examined against (1) recent litigation in which Cuba has been accused  (directly or indirectly) of violating international law by operating enterprises based on forced labor, (2) the possibility of conforming to the OECD’s Guidelines on Corporate Governance of State Owned Enterprises, and (3) the possibility that these enterprises will not be able to conform to the United Nation’s developing business and Human Rights project.”

Larry Catá Backer is the W. Richard and Mary Eshelman Faculty Scholar
and Professor of Law, Professor of International Affairs, Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of the  legal Blog Law at the End of the Day,
The complete Essay is available here:

GLOBALIZATION AND THE SOCIALIST MULTINATIONAL CUBA AND ALBA’S GRANNACIONAL PROJECTS AT THE INTERSECTION OF BUSINESS AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Larry Catá Backer

INTRODUCTION

This paper considers Cuba’s new efforts at global engagements through the device of the grannacional in its ALBA framework. The paper starts by examining the basic theory and objectives of the grannacional generally as articulated in ALBA publications as the
“concepto grannacional” that serves as the organizing framework of these multi-state socialist enterprises. It considers distinctions and implications for the division of grannacional efforts between proyectos grannacionales and empresas grannacionales. It then focuses on a specific grannacional-related project—the Misión Barrio Adentro (MBA), a socio-political barter project in which Cuba exchanges doctors and other health field related goods and services under its control for Venezuelan goods, principally petroleum.
(Convenio 2000). MBA is analyzed as an example of the application of Cuban-Venezuelan approach to economic and social organization through the state. The MBA is also useful as an illustration of the difficulties of translating that approach into forms that might conform with emerging global expectations of economic conduct by private and state actors. The recent litigation  in which Cuba has been accused (directly or indirectly) of violating international law by operating enterprises based on forced labor by both laborers and doctors, and soft law systems of governing  business conduct (Galliot 2010) serve as a backdrop against which this analysis is undertaken. For Cuba programs like MBA have served as a means
of engaging in economic globalization and of leveraging its political intervention in the service of its ideological programs in receptive states like Venezuela. (Bustamante & Sweig 2008; Kirk & Erisman 2009). It has also provided a basis for expanding Cuba’s commercial power by permitting large scale state-directed barter transactions. But when bartering involves labor as well as capital, the fundamental premises of the ALBA system—and Cuban ideological notions of the fungibility of labor and capital in the service of the state—may collide with emerging global frameworks for human rights and economic activity. That collision is examined against (1) recent litigation in which Cuba has been accused  (directly or indirectly) of violating international law by operating enterprises based on forced labor, (2) the possibility of conforming to the OECD’s Guidelines on Corporate Governance of State Owned Enterprises, and (3) the possibility that these enterprises will not be able to conform to the United Nation’s developing business and Human Rights project. MBA serves as a template both to  understand the character of the operationalization of social sector  grannacionales and also to illustrate the way in which these projects raise significant questions of international law compliance, especially the ability of these enterprises to comply with emerging standards of business conduct.

CONCLUSION
Cuba has begun the process of seriously integrating itself within an international economic architecture. It is seeking to engage in globalization on its own terms. It means to use global engagement to open another front in its great ideological campaigns against the emerging conventional system private markets driven economic globalization in favor of a more state directed and controlled system of commercial activity among states. An important venue for that
engagement has been through ALBA. ALBA has served as a vehicle for regional integration through which the ideology driving the  Cuban state is leveraged, applied and furthered by others, principally Venezuela. In the form of ALBA’s grannacional projects
and enterprises, ALBA states seek to mimic, and by mimicking to subvert, the conventional framework for economic globalization.
It is one thing to describe the ideological and functional framework for the grannacional project. It is quite another matter to consider the way these enterprises might operate on a day-to-day basis. And more importantly, it is necessary to consider the implications
of such operation of these supra-national corporations under standards of international soft and hard law. This paper has suggested the contours of the violation exposure of grannacional projects under these international norms. The very ideological foundation of the grannacional projects serves as the basis
for conflict with normative standards in effect elsewhere.
In a command economy in which there is no distinction between the political and economic sphere and where the line between obligations of citizens and of workers is blurred, the difference between a citizen’s duty to the state and involuntary servitude can be quite thin. It is unlikely that international standards will bend to accommodate substantial deviations where the functional effect of state action appears to substantially impede recognized human rights, as those are generally understood. It suggests that while Cuba and the ALBA states may avoid the consequences of breach within their own territories, their assets elsewhere may be exposed to actions based on those breaches. And, perhaps more importantly, private and public enterprises of other states will also be exposed to liability for complicity Cuba in Transition in the violations of grannacional enterprises with which they might partner. That can have significant effects on the ability of grannacional enterprises to
forge significant business relationships outside the ALBA area. Global human rights norms, then, might confine grannacional activity to the territory of the sponsoring states more effectively than any sort of politically motivated embargo. The possible exposure of Cuba for human rights violations in connection
with its labor barter transactions illustrates the nature of the problem. Cuba (and ALBA) may well have to pay a price for the choice of their collective form of economic global engagement as it collides with the emerging legal and normative framework for international human rights applies to economic activity that, ironically enough, Cuba has helped to construct.

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Cuba in Transition: Volume 20 Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy

The papers from the 2010 meetings of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy have just been posted on the ASCE Web Site and can be found at Papers and Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Meeting of ASCE.

As usual, a wide range of excellent papers are presented at ASCE’s annual meetings Many essays include valuable, original and ground-breaking analyses on a wide range of economic as well as socio-economic and politico-economic issues..

A Table of Contents with hyperlinked titles of the papers is included below.

Preface

Conference Program

Table of Contents

The Cuban Economy in 2010 as Seen by Economists Within the Island and Other Observers

Joaquín P. Pujol

La Economía Cubana: ¿Tiempos de Esperanza?

Oscar Espinosa Chepe

Crisis Management of Cuban International Liquidity

Luis R. Luis

If It Were Just the Marabú… Cuba’s Agriculture 2009-10

G.B. Hagelberg

The Numbers Diet: Food Imports as Economic Indicators

Lauren Gifford

Government-Controlled Travel Costs to Cuba and Costs of Related Consular Services: Analysis and International Comparisons

Sergio Díaz-Briquets

Envios de Remesas a Cuba: Desarrollo, Evolución e Impacto

Emilio Morales Dopico

Dashed Expectations: Raúl Castro’s Management of The Cuban Economy, 2006–2010

Jorge F. Pérez-López

Cuba: ¿Hacia otro “Periodo Especial”?

Mario A. González-Corzo

Cuban Education and Human Capital Formation

Enrique S. Pumar

La Masonería Cubana y su Contribución a la Sociedad Civil

Jorge Luis Romeu

The Internet and Emergent Blogosphere in Cuba: Downloading Democracy, Booting Up Development, or Planting the Virus of Dissidence and Destabilization?

Ted Henken

El Insostenible Apoyo Económico de Venezuela a Cuba y sus Implicaciones

Rolando H. Castañeda

Cuba-Venezuela Health Diplomacy: The Politics of Humanitarianism

Maria C. Werlau

British Policy-Making and Our Leyland in Havana (1963–1964)

Maria Carla Chicuén

La Desigualdad en Cuba: El Color Cuenta

Natalie Kitroeff

A Macroeconomic Approach to Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Inflow from the People’s Republic of China to Cuba

Orlando R. Villaverde

A Survey of the Relationship between Cuba and China: A Chinese Perspective

Pin Zuo

The Evolution of the Cuban Military: A Comparative Look at the FAR with the
Bureaucratic-Authoritarian Model of South America

Michael Aranda

Empowering the Cuban People Through Access to Technology

Cuba Study Group

The Global Economic and Financial Crisis and Cuba’s Healthcare and Biotechnology Sector: Prospects For Survivorship and Longer-term Sustainability

Elaine Scheye

Globalization and the Socialist Multinational: Cuba and ALBA’s Grannacional Projects at the Intersection of Business and Human Rights

Larry Catá Backer

Racismo Estructural en Cuba y Disidencia Política: Breves Antecedentes

Ramón Humberto Colás

Arbitration and Mediation: Impartial Forums to Resolve International Commercial Disputes in Cuba

Rolando Anillo-Badia

Gazing at the Green Light: The Legal and Business Aspects of Real Property Investment in Cuba

Richard M. David

The Creation and Evolution of the Legal Black Hole at Guantánamo Bay

Michael J. Strauss

Las Relaciones Cuba-Israel: A la Espera de una Nueva Etapa

Arturo López-Levy

Revolutionary Cuba’s GDP: A Survey of Methods and Estimates

Jorge F. Pérez-López

A Dynamic Factor Model of Quarterly Real Gross Domestic Product Growth in the Caribbean: The Case of Cuba and the Bahamas

Philip Liu and Rafael Romeu

Cuba’s Attempts at Democracy: The Colony

Roger R. Betancourt

Lessons Learned from 20 Years of Privatization: Albania, Estonia and Russia

Jorge A. Sanguinetty and Tania Mastrapa

The Cuban Tourism Sector: A Note On Performance in the first Decade of the 21st Century

María Dolores Espino

Prospects for Tourism in Cuba: Report on the Residential Sales/Leases in Golf and Marina Developments

Antonio R. Zamora

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