Too late but profitable: Railroads in Colombia during 1920–1950

A Meisel, Maria Ramirez-Giraldo and Juliana Jaramillo-Echeverri

Investigaciones de Historia Económica - Economic History Research (IHE-EHR), Journal of the Spanish Economic History Association, 2016, vol. 12, issue 03, 165-180

Abstract: During the 1920s, the Colombian economy experienced the highest growth rate in its history. The economic reforms of 1923 (central bank, gold standard, banking legislation, fiscal reorganization), a coffee boom, and an unprecedented influx of foreign capital were the driving forces behind this success. The loans obtained by 1929 amounted to 257 million dollars. Those funds were used mainly to build much needed infrastructure, particularly railroads. In this paper, we estimate the rates of return of the investments made in Colombian railroads during the period 1924–1950. We consider that Colombia ended up paying only around 85% of the loans obtained in the 1920s, owing to the suspension of foreign debt payments; as a result, the profitability in the construction of railways was higher. The rates of return on the railroads constructed and extended in the 1920s are comparable to those obtained for European countries in the nineteenth century. KEY Classification-JEL: N26. N76. O16. O18

Keywords: Railroads.; Rate; of; return.; Investment.; Foreign; debt (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://recyt.fecyt.es/index.php/IHE/article/view/70754/42847 (application/pdf)
This is an Open Access journal

Related works:
Working Paper: Too Late but Profitable: Railroads in Colombia during 1920-1950 (2014)
Working Paper: Too Late but Profitable: Railroads in Colombia during 1920-1950 (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ahe:invest:v:12:y:2016:i:03:p:165-180

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Investigaciones de Historia Económica - Economic History Research (IHE-EHR), Journal of the Spanish Economic History Association from Asociación Española de Historia Económica Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Elena Garcia Cruz ().