Book contents
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- List of Figures and Tables
- List of Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction: Latin American Economic Backwardness Revisited
- 1 Expectations, Institutions and Economic Performance: Latin America and the Western European Periphery during the Twentieth Century
- 2 On the Accuracy of Latin American Trade Statistics: A Non-Parametric Test for 1925
- 3 Latin America and Its Main Trade Partners, 1860–1930: Did the First World War Affect Geographical Patterns?
- 4 The Structure of Latin American Investment in Equipment Goods during the Mature Period of the First Globalization
- 5 Factorial Distribution of Income in Latin America, 1950–2000: New Series from the National Account Data
- 6 The Influence of the First World War on the Economies of Central America, 1900–29: An Analysis From a Foreign Trade Perspective
- 7 Economic Modernization in Adverse Institutional Environments: The Cases of Cuba and Chile
- 8 Capital Goods Imports, Machinery Investment and Economic Development in the Long Run: The Case of Chile
- 9 The Sugar Industry, the Forests and the Cuban Energy Transition, from the Eighteenth Century to the Mid-Twentieth Century
- 10 Empirical Debate on Terms Of Trade and the Double Factorial Terms of Trade of Colombia, 1975–2006
- 11 Public Revenues in Bolivia, 1900–31
- 12 The Consumption of Durable Goods in Latin America, 1890–1913: Analysis and Estimation of a Demand Function
- Notes
- Index
6 - The Influence of the First World War on the Economies of Central America, 1900–29: An Analysis From a Foreign Trade Perspective
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- List of Figures and Tables
- List of Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction: Latin American Economic Backwardness Revisited
- 1 Expectations, Institutions and Economic Performance: Latin America and the Western European Periphery during the Twentieth Century
- 2 On the Accuracy of Latin American Trade Statistics: A Non-Parametric Test for 1925
- 3 Latin America and Its Main Trade Partners, 1860–1930: Did the First World War Affect Geographical Patterns?
- 4 The Structure of Latin American Investment in Equipment Goods during the Mature Period of the First Globalization
- 5 Factorial Distribution of Income in Latin America, 1950–2000: New Series from the National Account Data
- 6 The Influence of the First World War on the Economies of Central America, 1900–29: An Analysis From a Foreign Trade Perspective
- 7 Economic Modernization in Adverse Institutional Environments: The Cases of Cuba and Chile
- 8 Capital Goods Imports, Machinery Investment and Economic Development in the Long Run: The Case of Chile
- 9 The Sugar Industry, the Forests and the Cuban Energy Transition, from the Eighteenth Century to the Mid-Twentieth Century
- 10 Empirical Debate on Terms Of Trade and the Double Factorial Terms of Trade of Colombia, 1975–2006
- 11 Public Revenues in Bolivia, 1900–31
- 12 The Consumption of Durable Goods in Latin America, 1890–1913: Analysis and Estimation of a Demand Function
- Notes
- Index
Summary
Introduction
In current Central American historiography not much attention is paid to what happened to the region's economy during the First World War. The impact of the war is virtually unknown, other than that Central American trade temporarily shifted from Europe to the United States because of the naval blockades of the former during the conflict. For the period before the 1920s, no yearly GDP estimates exist, so in order to find out about the economic impact of the war, we need to consult other economic indicators. Fortunately, the five Central American republics published foreign trade statistics on a regular basis from the first decade of the twentieth century onwards. As the Central American countries depended exclusively on imported capital goods and fossil energy, we can find out the levels of apparent consumption of these products per country by studying their yearly import statistics. I will analyse the import statistics of machinery, energy, cement and foodstuffs. The behaviour of these different import cycles can give us indications about the economic performance of each Central American country, before, during and after the First World War. The aim of this paper is to measure the impact of the war and explain why some countries suffered a serious economic setback during the conflict, while others managed to benefit from its consequences.
During the nineteenth century, the Central American countries opened their economies to the rest of the world. Costa Rica started first with the export of coffee, followed by Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Economies of Latin AmericaNew Cliometric Data, pp. 93 - 104Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014