Black labor, white sugar: Caribbean braceros and their struggle for power in the Cuban sugar industry

2015 ◽  
Vol 53 (03) ◽  
pp. 53-1439-53-1439
Keyword(s):  
Sugar Industry ◽  
Black Labor ◽  
Cuban Sugar ◽  
White 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.

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