Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c4f8m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T07:26:58.378Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Arrested Development? Puerto Rico in an American Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2019

John Devereux
John Devereux*
Affiliation:
John Devereux is Professor, Department of Economics, Queens College, CUNY, Flushing, New York, New York, 11367-1597. E-mail: John.devereux@qc.cuny.edu.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Puerto Rico became an American colony in 1898, achieving self-rule after the Great Depression. The standard view is that Puerto Rican living standards stagnated before the policy changes of the New Deal and it has lost ground on the mainland since the early 1970s. I show these claims are mistaken. Using a new GDP index for 1900 to 1940, I show that income per capita grew at impressive rates during direct American rule and Puerto Rico escaped the worst ravages of the Great Depression. In addition, I find the recent growth slowdown is partly a statistical artifact.

Type
Article
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 79 , Issue 3 , September 2019 , pp. 708 - 735
Copyright
© The Economic History Association 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

I am especially grateful to the editor, William Collins, and to three anonymous referees for their assistance which greatly improved the paper. I thank Victor Bulmer Thomas, Frank Barry, Kris James Mitchener, Leandro Prados de la Escosura, and participants at the ASCE session at the American Economic Association meetings and a seminar at Carlos II Madrid for their suggestions. I also thank Jim Schmitz and Brian Marein for helpful comments and for sharing data.

References

REFERENCES

Abel, Jaison, Bram, Jason, Deitz, Richard, et al. Report on the Competitiveness of Puerto Rico’s Economy. New York: Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 2012.Google Scholar
Acemoglu, Daron, Johnson, Simon, and Robinson, James A.. “The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation.” American Economic Review 91, no. 5 (2001): 1369–401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Acemoglu, Daron, Johnson, Simon, and Robinson, James A.. “Reversal of Fortune: Geography and Institutions in the Making of the Modern World Income Distribution.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 117, no. 4 (2002): 1231–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ayala, César J., and Bernabe, Rafael. Puerto Rico in the American Century: A History since 1898. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Baer, Werner. “Puerto Rico: An Evaluation of a Successful Development.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 73, no. 4 (1959): 645–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baumol, William J., and Wolff, Edward N.. “Catching up in the Postwar Period: Puerto Rico as the Fifth “Tiger”?” World Development 24, no. 5 (1996): 869–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bosworth, Barry P., and Collins, Susan M.. “Economic Growth.” In The Economy of Puerto Rico: Restoring Growth, edited by Collins, Susan M., Bosworth, Barry P., and Soto-Class, Miguel A., 17–69. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Braithwaite, Stanley N. “Real Income Levels in Latin America.” Review of Income and Wealth 14, no. 2 (1968): 113–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bridgman, Benjamin, Maio, Michael, Schmitz, James A. Jr., et al. “What Ever Happened to the Puerto Rican Sugar Manufacturing Industry?” Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Research Department Staff Report No. 477, Minneapolis, Minnesota, December 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bureau of Economic Analysis. Evaluation and Improvement of Puerto Rico’s Economic Accounts. Washington, DC: BEA, 2011.Google Scholar
Bureau of Economics and Statistics. Annual Book on Statistics of Puerto Rico. San Juan, Puerto Rico: Division of Statistics, Section of Economic Indices, 1955.Google Scholar
Burrows, Geoff G. “The New Deal in Puerto Rico: Public Works, Public Health, and the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration, 1935–1955.” Ph.D. diss., CUNY Graduate Center, 2014.Google Scholar
Clark, Victor S. Puerto Rico and Its Problems. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1930.Google Scholar
Collins, Susan M., Bosworth, Barry P., and Soto-Class, Miguel A., eds. The Economy of Puerto Rico: Restoring Growth. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Creamer, Daniel B. The Net Income of the Puerto Rican Economy, 1940–1944. San Juan Puerto Rico: Social Science Research Center University of Puerto Rico, 1947.Google Scholar
Davis, Joseph H. “An Annual Index of U.S. Industrial Production, 1790–1915.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 119, no. 4 (2004): 1177–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Jesús Toro, Rafael. Historia Económica de Puerto Rico. Cincinnati, OH: South-Western Publishing Co., 1982.Google Scholar
Devereux, John. “Replication: Arrested Development? Puerto Rico in an American Century.” Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2019-06-24. https://doi.org/10.3886/E110324V1.Google Scholar
Dewhurst, James, Coppock, John, and Yates, Larmarartine. Europe’s Needs and Resources. New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1961.Google Scholar
Dietz, James L. Economic History of Puerto Rico: Institutional Change and Capitalist Development. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Diffie, Bailey W., and Diffie, Justine Whitfield. Porto Rico: A Broken Pledge. New York: The Vanguard Press, 1931.Google Scholar
Duany, Jorge. “To Send or Not to Send: Migrant Remittances in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 630, no. 1 (2010): 205–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engerman, Stanley L., and Sokoloff, Kenneth L.. “Factor Endowments, Institutions, and Differential Paths of Growth among New World Economies.” In How Latin America Fell Behind, edited by Haber, Stephen, 260–304. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Feenstra, Robert C., Inklaar, Robert, and Timmer, Marcel P.. “The Next Generation of the Penn World Table.” American Economic Review 105, no. 10 (2015): 3150–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feinstein, Charles Hilliard. National Income, Expenditure and Output of the United Kingdom, 1855–1965. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972.Google Scholar
Fuentes-Ramírez, Ricardo R. “An Approximation of Puerto Rico’s Human Development Index.” Caribbean Studies 42, no 1. (2014): 253–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gayer, Arthur David, Homan, Paul Thomas, and James, Earle Kenneth. The Sugar Economy of Puerto Rico.” New York: Columbia University Press, 1938.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerschenkron, Alexander. “The Soviet Indices of Industrial Production.” Review of Economics and Statistics 29, no. 4 (1947): 217–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerschenkron, Alexander. “Problems in Measuring Long Term Growth in Income and Wealth.” Journal of the American Statistical Association 52, no. 280 (1957): 450–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilbert, Milton, and Kravis, Irving. An International Comparison of National Products and the Purchasing Power of Currencies. Paris: OEEC, 1954.Google Scholar
Gilbert, Milton, and Kravis, Irving. Comparative National Products and Price Levels. Paris: OEEC, 1958.Google Scholar
Hansen, Gary D., and Ohanian, Lee E.. “Neoclassical Models in Macroeconomics.” In Handbook of Macroeconomics, vol. 2., edited by Taylor, John B. and Uhlig, Harald, 2043–130. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2016.Google Scholar
Janer, José L. “Population Growth in Puerto Rico and Its Relation to Time Changes in Vital Statistics.” Human Biology 17, no. 4 (1945): 267–313.Google ScholarPubMed
Kendrick, John. Productivity Trends in the United States. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961.Google Scholar
Kohli, Ulrich. “Real GDP, Real Domestic Income, and Terms-of-Trade Changes.” Journal of International Economics 62, no. 1 (2004): 83–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krueger, Anne O., Teja, Ranjit, and Wolfe, Andrew. Puerto Rico–A Way Forward. San Juan: Government Bank for Puerto Rico, 2015.Google Scholar
La Croix, Sumner. “Outlying Areas.” Historical Statistics of the United States, Millennial Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Lebergott, Stanley. “The Returns to U.S. Imperialism, 1890–1929.” Journal of Economic History 40, no. 2 (1980): 229–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marein, Brian. “From Puerto Rico to Porto Rico: Spatial Trends in the Spanish and American Empires, 1765–2010.” Working Paper, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, 2018.Google Scholar
Maddison, Angus. The World Economy: Vol. Two Historical Statistics. Paris: Development Center of the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, 2007.Google Scholar
Maurer, Noel. The Empire Trap: The Rise and Fall of U.S. Intervention to Protect American Property Overseas, 1893–2013. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Mitchener, Kris James, and Weidenmier, Marc. “Empire, Public Goods, and the Roosevelt Corollary.” Journal of Economic History 65, no. 3 (2005): 658–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perloff, , Harvey, S. Puerto Rico’s Economic Future: A Study in Planned Development. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950.Google Scholar
Pico, Rafael, and Perloff, Harvey S.. Economic Development of Puerto Rico 1940–1950, 1951–1960. Puerto Rico: Planning Board, 1951.Google Scholar
Prados de la Escosura, Leandro. “International Comparisons of Real Product, 1820–1990: An Alternative Data Set.” Explorations in Economic History 37, no. 1 (2000): 1–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Riley, James C. “The Timing and Pace of Health Transitions Around the World.” Population and Development Review 31, no. 4 (2005): 741–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwartz, Stuart B. “The Hurricane of San Ciriaco: Disaster, Politics, and Society in Puerto Rico, 1899–1901.” Hispanic American Historical Review 72, no. 3 (1992): 303–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silver, Mick, and Mahdavy, Khashayar. “The Measurement of a Nation’s Terms of Trade Effect and Real National Disposable Income within a National Accounting Framework.” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A (Statistics in Society) 152, no. 1 (1989): 87–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Santamaría García, Antonio, Ayala, César J., and Bernabé, Rafael. “Historia Económica de Puerto Rico, 1817-siglo XXI.” Working Paper, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Spain, 2012.Google Scholar
Smith, Dudley. Growth of Business Activity in Puerto Rico and Underlying Causes. Washington, DC: Association of Sugar Producers of Puerto Rico, 1938.Google Scholar
Smith, Dudley. Puerto Rico’s Income. Washington, DC: Association of Sugar Producers of Puerto Rico, 1943.Google Scholar
Stohr, Christian. “Trading Gains: New Estimates of Swiss GDP, 1851 to 2008.” Working Paper No. 245, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK, 2016.Google Scholar
Tugwell, Rexwell. The Stricken Land. New York: Doubleday, 1947.Google Scholar
Ward, Marianne, and Devereux, John. “The Road Not Taken: Pre-Revolutionary Cuban Living Standards in Comparative Perspective.” Journal of Economic History 72, no. 1 (2012): 104–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar