From the Russian Revolution to the Cuban Revolution

What the Cuban Revolution Means to Older Cubans

This paper discusses what the Cuban Revolution means to older Cubans and how it has changed their lives. It addresses why many older Cubans still appear to identify with the revolution and its accomplishments, despite its failure to provide for their basic needs. The elderly are disproportionately affected by the hardships of life in Cuba, receiving pensions on which they cannot live, residing ...

Cuban Agriculture: A Green and Red Revolution

There is more to Cuba than fabulous cigars, 1950s cars, cheap rum, and music so infectious that even a Norwegian bachelor farmer will get up and dance to it. It also happens to be a showcase for policy transformation from industrialized agriculture to a greener, sustainable agriculture. Cuba has transformed its agriculture from a low productivity, highly subsidized, high input system to one tha...

Evaluating Russian Economic Growth without the Revolution of 1917∗

This paper uses modern econometric techniques, such as the lasso and the synthetic control method, to construct the counterfactual GDP per capita series for Russia for 1917–1940. The goal of this paper is twofold: first, to predict how the Russian economy might have developed without the Revolution; second, to evaluate and compare various econometric methods for computing the counterfactual GDP...

Urbanization and Deurbanization in the Russian Revolution and Civil War

From the Green Revolution to the Gene Revolution: How will the Poor Fare?

The past four decades have seen two waves of agricultural technology development and diffusion to developing countries. The first wave was initiated by the Green Revolution in which an explicit strategy for technology development and diffusion targeting poor farmers in poor countries made improved germplasm freely available as a public good. The second wave was generated by the Gene Revolution ...