Is Puerto Rico the missing Latin American Tiger?

José Caraballo-Cueto

Chapter 27 in The Elgar Companion to the Economies of Latin America and the Caribbean, 2025, pp 547-567 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: In development economics, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Korea are considered the “Asian Tigers”: economies that outperformed the developing world in terms of per capita income growth during the 20th century. However, in Latin America, there are no clear “Latin American Tigers.” For some observers, Puerto Rico is one. Indeed, Puerto Rico had a per capita income level higher than South Korea and Taiwan in 1950, but the trend was reversed during the 1990s. By then, the growth model of Puerto Rico was already worn out while the Asian Tigers boomed. In this chapter, we compare the growth model of South Korea vis-à-vis Puerto Rico and show that an unbalanced growth path was associated with Puerto Rico's falling behind in terms of economic growth. However, the improvements in education and health have helped the island to still preserve a relatively high human development in Latin America.

Keywords: Puerto Rico; Economic growth; Asian Tigers; Latin America (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035317196
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