Topic: Essay on Latin American Economy
Instruction:
Economics 361 – Spring 2018, Midterm Exam I
Study these 5 questions for the first Midterm. On Thurs, Feb 22 you will be presented with 3 of
these 5 essay questions and asked to answer 2 of them in class without notes. You should draw
both on material covered in class and in your texts. Please use a separate sheet of notebook
paper for each essay that you write. (Do NOT use blue books.)
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1. How have Latin America’s natural resources and geography contributed to economic
development in the region? How did this differ in early years from the development of North America? Include a description of Latin America’s natural resources and indigenous crops. How did the period of Spanish domination influence the use or exploitation of natural resources in Latin America? Describe some specific institutions that governed land and mineral resources in Latin America’s colonial period. What were their lingering effects?
2. Most countries of Latin America won their independence around 1820 and entered into the world economy in the 19th century. Why did Great Britain help to finance the wars for
independence? What were some of the problems of the new nation states? Describe the Golden Age of Trade between 1870 -1914; how did Celso Furtado analyze the impact of the various types of products that countries in Latin America exported during this period? Which country grew the most between 1870 and 1914, and what was at the root of its progress?
3. What is development? Sustainable development? We often use real per capita GDP as a proxy for the level of development. What is GDP and real per capita GDP? What are some of the problems with this indicator for measuring development? Why is it still so commonly used? Discuss alternative indicators and their role in further describing developing countries. What kinds of differences between developed and developing countries did structuralist economists like Hollis Chenery observe?
4. Discuss the dependency, structuralist, and neoclassical/free market theories of development. How have they influenced policy in Latin America? What is the recommended role of the state in each? When (and where) were these theories in vogue and what have been their lingering effects? How do foreign aid and foreign investment fit into these and other theories of development?
5. Discuss the special role of Cuba in Latin America: When and how did Cuba gain its
independence from Spain? (Compare to other countries.) What was the Platt Amendment and how was it related to Guantanamo? Who is Fidel Castro and why was he important; who was Che Guevara? Why did the U.S. impose an embargo on trade with Cuba? When did it begin and why has it lasted so long? What was the Special Period? How has the Cuban economy changed since 1990 (i.e. just before the Special Period)?
No. of Pages: 2
