La América latina y el caribe en 1913 y 1925: Enfoque desde las importaciones de bienes de capital

Abstract

We study the levels of economic development achieved by every independent Latin American and Caribbean country in 1913 and 1925 from a new regional perspective. We focus on the imports and the domestic production - equivalent to apparent consumption - of capital goods. The first contribution is to establish the reliability of the foreign trade statistics. The second is to estimate the size of the capital goods acquired by the twenty republics. We also estimate domestic output. The new empirical evidence shows the huge differences existing within the region in per capita expenditure by 1913, when the first globalization wave was coming to an end. The comparison between 1913 and 1925 levels makes clear that, generally speaking, First World War and its immediate aftermath did favor capital goods import substitution all over the region, but quite unevenly.