December 1, 2016 - 2:30 PM
Speaker:
Richard E. Feinberg, Brookings Institution & University of California
Discussant: Mario González-Corzo, Lehman College, CUNY
Moderator: Mauricio Font, Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies
In Open for Business: Building the New Cuban Economy, Feinberg considers seven original corporate case studies of joint ventures, and draws conclusions about the conditions under which foreign investment can succeed within Cuba’s still-socialist economy. Going forward, what measures are necessary to improve business conditions within Cuba and attract more foreign capital, and how can the Cuban state ensure that investment returns benefit the Cuban people as a whole and place the economy on a path to sustainable development?
Richard E. Feinberg (Ph.D., Stanford University) is currently a nonresident senior fellow in the Latin America Initiative at Brookings and a professor of international political economy in the School of Global Policy and Strategy (formerly the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies) at the University of California, San Diego. Previously, Feinberg served as special assistant to President Clinton for National Security Affairs and senior director of the National Security Council’s Office of Inter-American Affairs. Since 2005, he has been the book reviewer for the Western Hemisphere section of Foreign Affairs magazine, the flagship publication of the Council on Foreign Relations. Feinberg is author of over 200 books and articles on international relations.
Mario A. González-Corzo (Ph.D., Rutgers University) is Associate Professor at the Department of Economics and Business at Lehman College, CUNY. He is also Adjunct Professor at Columbia University. His research interests and areas of specialization include Cuba’s post-Soviet economic transformations, with a particular emphasis on agricultural reforms, and the changing role of employment and wages in Cuba’s emerging non-State sector. Dr. González-Corzo is a Faculty Fellow at the Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies at The Graduate Center, CUNY, and a Research Associate at the Cuba Transition Project in the Institute of Cuban and Cuban-American Studies (ICCAS) at the University of Miami (FL). He is also a Contributing Editor for the section on Cuban political economy and economics of the Handbook of Latin American Studies (HLAS) published by the Library of Congress.
Mauricio Font (Ph.D., University of Michigan) is Director of the Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies and Professor of Sociology at The Graduate Center and Queens College, CUNY. His most recent publication is The State and the Private Sector in Latin America (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). Font is co-editor of Handbook on Cuban History, Literature, and the Arts (Paradigm Press, 2014), Cuban Counterpoints: The Legacy of Fernando Ortiz (Lexington Books, 2005), La República Cubana y José Martí (1902-2002) (Lexington Books, 2005), Toward a New Cuba? (Lynne Rienner, 1997) and Integración económica y democratización: América Latina y Cuba (Instituto de Estudios Internacionales, Universidad de Chile, 1998).
