The bicentennial of a failure: Venezuelan economic growth from the late colonial age to the Bolivarian Revolution; a quantitative history

"An inform published by ECLAC in 2003 (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean) under the title: El Desarrollo económico de America Latina en épocas de globalización- Una agenda de investigación, called on the Institution to design and implement a new research agenda directed toward the reconstruction of long economic series to better understand the past performance of Latin America economy as a whole to make a correct analysis of the present day challenges. Therefore going beyond and complementing the short-term concern with development with a longer view on economic progress. The mentioned paper remember us that it was Raul Prebish who even before Simon Kuznets, made an effort to measured economic progress on the basis of an homogenous and standardized method that he used for Mexico, Brazil , Argentina and Chile. The aim of this paper is to fulfill this gap for Venezuela, profiting from the fact that we are in the middle of the year of the Bicentennial Independence Commemorations. For that purpose we have built a GDP and population historical series starting in 1783 and ending in 2009, employing for the colonial period a statistical method that regresses foreign commerce on the relation between the national product and exports - imports for the period between 1830-1870, before the impact created by the new economic policies implemented by the Autocratic Government of Guzman Blanco with its emphasis on progress. For the series 1830-1949 we employed an expenditure approach to reconstruct the product of Venezuela by using as departing point a dynamic consumer basket to get household/ personal consumption, then adding up government expenditures, net exports and private investment. We link the series from 1783 to 1949 with the Central Bank of Venezuela macroeconomic information for the interval 1950-2009, thus obtaining the GDP and real income series from the late colonial era to the Bolivarian revolution. That is a long economic series of 226 years. The series submitted in the paper is expressed in current prices, 1984 constant bolivars and 1990 international dollars. The paper includes two Price indexes for the period 1830-1949, a General Price Index from 1830 to 1949 and Food and Beverage Index for 1830-1949, a deflator for the period 1783- 2009, an economic balance of the independence war, a critical review of the partial series suggested by professors Asdrubal Baptista and Tomas Enrique Carrillo Batalla, an quantitative performance evaluation of the Venezuelan economy from the late eighteen century to the present , the prices of the principal products consume by the Venezuelan people during the 19TH century and early 20Th and data, energy consumption , material wealth, and cross country comparisons with the largest Latin American economies ( Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Argentina). The method proposed and employed- in this case for Venezuela- could be applied with great advantages for others Latin America countries lacking enough data to build satisfactory long economic series using the income or output approaches. We were able to identify six economic phases for Venezuela: The first one from 1783 to 1797 of economic expansion, followed by stagnation, from 1800 to 1810, when the colonial economy reached her frontier production boundary. During the war of independence a marked contraction of the GDP followed by a fast recuperation. The fourth, from 1830 to 1924, describe as a stationary economy. The fifth, from 1920 to 1958, of oil driven development, characterize by a high velocity growth, the sixth, from 1958 to 1978 define as a mature oil economy with slow growth, and the last one from 1979 , designated as an era of stagnation and relative decline vis a vis the rest of Latin America."