This paper is a survey and assessment of a selection of economic models that are found in the Caribbean, chosen from two traditions of modelling: one, the medium/long term genre that has its roots in the work of Harrod and Domar, and the other, structural equation models in the Wharton/Cowles Commission tradition.
Very small economies may achieve high levels of development, as evidenced by Iceland and Mauritius, notwithstanding the facts of their high import dependence, limited capacity for export diversification, open financial markets and susceptibility to external shocks. This paper explains how unorthodox fiscal and monetary policies may be employed to ensure stability and maintain competitiveness and growth in the face of oil price shocks, the impact of natural disasters, capital flight and contraction in foreign investment, in countries characterised by this economic structure.
This chapter evaluates Guyana's economic performance since 1990, using the UNDP's Human Development Index. The confident expectations for Guyana's resource-rich economy in the 1970s were defeated by a failed experiment in state control which caused a major regression in economic development in the 1980s. By 1990 Guyana had fallen behind the rest of the Caribbean - Haiti excepted - in the HDI rankings. By that date, however, the last of the controls that had strangled production were being dismantled.