ABSTRACT
Cuba’s reform process can be productively assessed in the context of diverse reforms, transitions, and transformations since the last part of the twentieth century. Economists and policy makers often point to the virtues of liberalization and the flaws of traditional dirigisme to explain the speed and relative uniformity of postcommunist transitions and market reforms. The argument finds support from two strands of analysis. One draws from diverse schools of thought that have identified and critiqued flaws in state socialism and other centralized and statist regimes—abuse of power and authoritarianism, bureaucratic bloatedness and inefficiency, inefficacy, extensive patronage and clientelism, rent-seeking behavior and corruption, as well as fiscal deficits, inflation, and even proclivity to certain forms of financial crisis (Kornai, 1992). A rather different approach also comes from economists, who for an even longer time have staked their main disciplinary focus on the effectiveness of markets in allocating scarce resources among competing uses—claiming that freely fluctuating prices best regulate the relationship between supply and demand.
