José Alejandro Peres-Cajías

• PhD in Economic History, Universitat de Barcelona
• Fellow at University of Barcelona

This paper assesses whether the disruption of world trade, protectionist policies and industrial growth that dominated South American economic history from 1912 to 1950 permitted an increase in intraregional trade. The paper demonstrates that during this period intraregional trade reached some of the highest levels of the entire 20th century. These...

In the centuries before the Spanish conquest, the Bolivian space was among the most highly urbanized and complex societies in the Americas. In contrast, in the early twenty-first century, Bolivia is one of the poorest economies on the continent. According to Acemoglu et al. (Q J Econ 117(4):1231-1294, 2002), this disparity between precolonial opule...

This article demonstrates that Bolivian tariff policy during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was not as passive as previously assumed and that the average tariff ratio remained high. However, high average tariffs coexisted for a long time with free-entry rights for different products which represented the main economic activity of...

Mining and oil industries have been the most dynamic sectors of the Bolivian economy from independence onwards. This paper aims at analysing if this natural resources dependence has affected the long-term evolution (1883-2010) of Bolivian public finances through the so-called rentier state hypothesis (Ross, 1999). Two main conclusions arise from th...

This paper offers a long-term comparative study of Bolivian public finances using a new detailed database. First, it shows that Bolivian government revenues and expenditures were particularly small and volatile until the 1980s. Second, it stresses that, whereas the relative importance of social expenditure has grown constantly since the late 1930s,...

This chapter takes advantage of new digitized information in order to deal with an old Bolivian historiographic debate: the effects of education reforms in Bolivia during the first half of the twentieth century. It does by offering new information on education outputs at the departmental and provincial level. The new quantitative evidence shows tha...

This article combines cross-national statistical analysis and in-depth historical case studies of Argentina and Chile to explore the relationship between two crucial dimensions of state capacity. We show that information capacity contributes to the development of fiscal capacity. When states have accurate information about their subject populations...

El libro explora, a través de casos de estudio de cadenas productivas agroalimentarias en Bolivia, las dinámicas de los distintos eslabones que las conforman, a partir de la identificación de los procesos de generación y transferencia de conocimiento, inclusión social, equidad de género y prácticas ambientales que están presentes (o ausentes) en lo...

Book reviews - Crítica de libros - Crítica de livros (Historia Agraria, 88) Laurent Brassart, Corinne Marache, Juan Pan-Montojo, and Leen van Molle (Eds.): Making Politics in the European Countryside, 1780s-1930s. Jakub Beneš Malcolm Thick: William Ellis, Eighteenth-century farmer, journalist and entrepreneur. Susanna Wade-Martins Helena Kirchner y...

The resource curse literature has established that taxation of natural resources might limit the long-term development of fiscal capacity in resource-rich countries. This article explores if, and how, natural resource abundance generates fiscal dependence on natural resource revenues. We compare five peripheral economies of Latin America (Bolivia,...

Is the 'natural resource curse' destiny? Are different ways to link natural resources and economic development? Using two particular regions as case studies, this edited collection examines the divergent development paths of natural resource rich countries over the past two centuries. Bolivia, Chile and Peru are neighbour states with a common histo...

In this chapter, we explore how natural resources can be exploitable resources thanks to knowledge improvements. This issue is tackled by looking at the evolution of engineering faculties and graduate engineers from 1850 to 1939 in Andean and Nordic countries, two regions where natural resources were critical at the onset of modern economic growth....

In the context of exports expansion, we want to evaluate the ability of natural resource-abundant countries to reduce their dependence on natural resource exploitation in the long run. Specifically, we measure exports diversification in Chile and Norway in order to measure how they responded to global markets during the First and Second Globalizati...

This chapter compares the evolution of fiscal systems in Andean and Nordic countries between 1850 and 2010. It does so through the lens of the “fiscal contract”: because tax revenues are in some degree voluntary, citizens who pay them would expect state services in return, and have incentives and leverage to fiscalise the use of public funds. The s...

The resource curse literature has established that the taxation of natural resources might limit the long-term development of fiscal capacity in resource-rich countries. This article explores if, and how, natural resource abundance generates fiscal dependence on natural resource revenues. We compare five peripheral economies of Latin America (Boliv...

This chapter offers a general assessment of the economic activity in Bolivian regions thanks to an estimation, for the first time, of regional GDPs in Bolivia from 1950 onwards. The new quantitative evidence shows the economic upsurge and consolidation of new regions beyond the traditional economic zones, which were located to the west of the count...

Rather than exogenous endowments, natural resources can be seen as economically exploitable resources thanks to knowledge improvements. This underscores the need to understand why some natural resource abundant countries are able to develop their own technologies while others are not. We tackle this issue by looking at the evolution of engineering...

We argue that wars over natural resources, even if they are limited in their military scope, can have long-term consequences on the level and composition of public revenues. Military success in a resource war may lead to the annexation of natural resource-rich areas from enemy combatants, which provides the winning coalition with valuable and easyt...

Based on almost 5.000 direct observations on National Identification Cards, this paper offers the first estimation of the evolution of average heights in the city of La Paz (Bolivia) for the decades 1880s-1920s. The analysis focuses on men of middle and upper classes aged 19-50 years old. Despite the city's growing economic importance and moderniza...

This paper offers a general assessment of the economic activity in Bolivian regions thanks to an estimation, for the first time, of regional GDPs in Bolivia from 1950 onwards. The new quantitative evidence shows the economic upsurge and consolidation of new regions beyond the traditional economic zones, which were located to the west of the country...

Based on almost 5.000 direct observations on National Identification Cards, this paper offers the first estimation of the evolution of average heights in urban Bolivia for the decades 1880s-1920s. The analysis focuses on men aged 19-50 years registered in the city of La Paz. Despite city's growing economic importance and modernization, average heig...

After the economic reforms that followed the National Revolution of the 1950s, Bolivia seemed positioned for sustained growth. Indeed, it achieved unprecedented growth from 1960 to 1977. The rapid accumulation of debt due to persistent deficits and a fixed exchange rate policy during the 1970s led to a debt crisis that began in 1977. From 1977 to 1...

El presente libro reúne las ponencias elaboradas para el Seminario Internacional “Los desafíos del desarrollo productivo en el siglo XXI: Diversificación, justicia social y sostenibilidad ambiental” organizado por la ucb en septiembre de 2017 en la ciudad de La Paz. El seminario y el libro parten de la idea de que es necesario un cuestionamiento in...

After the economic reforms that followed the National Revolution of the 1950s, Bolivia seemed positioned for sustained growth. Indeed, it achieved unprecedented growth during 1960–1977. Mistakes in economic policies, especially the rapid accumulation of debt and a fixed exchange rate policy during the 1970s, led to a debt crisis that began in 1977....

The new estimates of the Maddison Project show that GDP per capita ratio at purchasing power parity (ppp) between Bolivia and Finland has changed from 0.68 ca. 1850 to 0.16 in 2015; similarly, that between Chile and Norway from 0.65 to 0.28. The aim of this article is to present a review of the literature and available quantitative evidence to unde...

The new estimates of the Maddison Project show that the p.p.p. GDP per capita ratio between Bolivia and Finland has changed from 0.68 ca. 1850 to 0.16 in 2015; similarly, that between Chile and Norway from 0.65 to 0.28. The aim of this article is to present a review of the literature and available quantitative evidence to understand how these extre...

This paper aims to evaluate the accuracy of official Bolivian foreign trade statistics. Results show large discrepancies between Bolivian records and those of its main trade partners during the First World War. Whereas the gap decreased thereafter, it stayed particularly high in the case of exports. This seems to be explained by mistakes in the geo...

This chapter analyzes the impact of the Bolivian export sector on the development of the economy from 1870 to 1950. This case study may help to reassess the export-led growth model because of four reasons: the constant dependence on a limited number of commodities (silver, rubber and tin), the geographic concentration of the export sector, a market...

This chapter aims at analyzing whether educational spending in Bolivia fits well into the regional description or, by contrast, changed radically and took distance from the Latin American pattern after the 1952 Revolution. Taking advantage of new quantitative evidence, the chapter stresses that the Revolution did not imply, in the long term, a subs...

Este trabajo analiza las miradas cambiantes con las que la historiografía boliviana del siglo XXy XXI han interpretado el siglo XIX; para ello, nos basamos en los insumos y en los debates generados en torno al libro De la fundación de la República (1825) al Centenario (1925), que constituye el cuarto tomo de la colección Bolivia, su historia (2015)...

This article aims to present and discuss the main contributións made by Bolivia, su historia in relatión to the económic históry of post-independence Bolivia, a period covered in Volumes IV, V and VI. The centrality of these contributions, as well as the challenges that remain to be addressed, is evaluated in the light of recent developments in Lat...

Since the 1920 discovery of oil in Bolivia, the country has experimented with varying systems of private control, monopoly state ownership and even mixed state and private ownership/rental of petroleum and gas fields. The aim of our analysis is to explain why these varying patterns of ownership occurred over time and to describe how they affected p...