"Omnipotent and Omnipresent"? Labor Shortages, Worker Mobility, and Employer Control in the Cuban Sugar Industry, I9IO-I934

2020 ◽  
pp. 260-292
Keyword(s):  
Sugar Industry ◽  
Worker Mobility ◽  
Cuban Sugar

Cuban Sugar Industry

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Curry-Machado
Keyword(s):  
Sugar Industry ◽  
Cuban Sugar

Avoiding Holdup: Asset Specificity and Technical Change in the Cuban Sugar Industry, 1899–1929

1994 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 628-653 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Dye
Keyword(s):  
Technical Change ◽  
Sugar Industry ◽  
Economic Structure ◽  
Asset Specificity ◽  
Western Region ◽  
Site Specificity ◽  
Incentive Structure ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Cuban Sugar ◽  
Relative Decline

Asset specificity can have profound influences on the economic structure of a country. An example is post-colonial Cuba. This article demonstrates that the existence of site specificity in assets generated problems of holdup for sugar mill owners in their contractual relations with cane suppliers. Recognition of that incentive structure offers an institutional explanation for the post-1900 concentration of U.S. investment in the eastern provinces. To reduce transaction costs, mill managers avoided investing in the western part of the island where the sugar industry was well established. A consequence was the relative decline of the western region.

The Caribbean Sugar Crisis: Consequences and Challenges

1986 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott B. MacDonald ◽  
F. Joseph Demetrius
Keyword(s):  
Sugar Industry ◽  
Production Costs ◽  
Quota System ◽  
Demand And Supply ◽  
The Us ◽  
Global Demand ◽  
Cuban Sugar ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Political Economic

“Being in Sugar is like collecting Confederate currency”. This assessment, offered by anthropologist Sidney Mintz (1985), is shared by many sugar industry observers, insiders, and, increasingly, by many Caribbean officials. King sugar, instrumental in shaping the diverse political, economic, and social histories of the Caribbean since colonial times, confronts a seemingly intractable crisis: a severe, and sustained, disequilibrium between global demand and supply which makes export of sugar very unattractive. Except in those cases where preferential arrangements exist between producers and consumers-the Lomé Convention, the US sugar quota system, and the Soviet guaranteed purchase of Cuban sugar-world prices for sugar are at a record low, well below production costs.

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