I'm very excited to see that the US has ended a half century of an embargo and economic sanctions against Cuba! I will be taking students from Towson and any other university who interested on a study abroad program May 26th to June 6th of this year for more information and to apply click here.
Cuba is quite the economic mystery. An old joke about Castro is that his three greatest accomplishments where healthcare, education and sports, but his three biggest failures were breakfast lunch and dinner. Cubans enjoy one of the best health systems out side of OECD countries, their life expectancy is within a year of the US in part because of their well trained medical staff that services the rest of Latin America and has been at the forefront in the fight against ebola. Any baseball fan knows that Cuba is one of the hotbeds of talent with 186 MLB players born there. Yet, Cuba is still home to persistent poverty. In part because Cubans cannot gain remittances from their family abroad. Research in economics has shown in some cases that remittances can help start businesses in the sending country. In other cases economic research does not show this effect. I'm guessing Cuba is much more likely to see growth in business from remittances given all of the opportunities that exist through lack of capital.
I look forward to traveling there this summer and hope to learn about the next chapter for Cuba.
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