Economics as a STEM Discipline and Its (Blocked) Contribution to Cuba's Future

2 days ago

The first thing I want to establish in this post is a position in the debate over whether economics belongs within the STEM tradition. After reviewing several analyses and academic trends, I argue that yes, economics can and should be considered as a member discipline—with full rights—in the STEM movement. Economics, at its foundation, always involves an important mathematical component. The most standard way to understand it as a STEM field is associated with intensive and organic use of mathematics and computational models, but the point is that the academic movement linking STEM with economics is clear and tangible. For example, consider the University of Washington's economics program information, the University at Buffalo's MS in Economics and Quantitative Economics, or this study from the IZA Institute of Labor Economics.

Now I move to the most relevant part of this contribution for STEM Social. To what extent has economics—as a science—been heard by Cuban policymakers throughout all these years of acute economic crisis? Not much, truthfully. For years, research and proposals have poured in—based on hard data and rigorous estimates—about the paths Cuban authorities should take regarding economic management. Yet because these proposals have tended simultaneously to challenge the status quo—marked by state management of the fundamental means of production—and to open space for potential entrenchment of poverty and social inequality, the decision was to postpone their adoption. And yet something interesting has occurred in this regard in the last few hours. I was drafting this post yesterday when, in the midst of the process, we learned of a potentially transcendental announcement.

The Cuban president, amid enormous pressure, announced that the Island will finally move toward a process of economic relaxation—or liberalization, if you prefer—of economic control. To assess how much, we need to see concrete laws and regulations. For example, regarding state enterprises, it is being proposed that they will finally function without intermediaries, and I even seem to understand—I stress, seem to understand—that there could be an opportunity for workers at each enterprise to acquire shares in those same companies. The other key potential transformation is that private actors will export and import directly. And finally, there will be a significant reduction in activities that the non-state sector cannot manage today, to make the scope of SMEs as broad as possible.

I want to focus on this last point. I recall a Cuban book published some fourteen years ago in which researchers from the Center for Studies on the Cuban Economy discussed the need to overcome the current model—regarding regulation of the private sector—which is based on a list of specific activities that private enterprises can manage. The idea is to shift to a model in which the state, by contrast, establishes a very small group of activities that the sector cannot manage—in Cuba, for example, weapons or ammunition production—, so that ideas and initiatives flourish. Today, for instance, a group of architects cannot form a company to provide professional services specific to their field. I cannot—and, to be honest, I still do not know if I will be able to—form a consulting firm to assess the political temperature or advise a Cuban company on what opportunities exist to operate in the U.S. market, or vice versa.

And yet the real question is not only: "What is the most economically efficient model?" The real questions are, among others, the following: "Efficient for whom, and at what cost to others?" There are things to be done, long overdue. I agree, and I regret so much time lost. But who bears the cost of liberalization? The vulnerable or those already secure? Do real spaces open for SMEs to flourish, or simply for private capital to prosper? These reforms require scientific rigor, but that rigor must address social justice. Economics is STEM in its own right, but without its social foundation, it is simply the technification of inequality.