A cura di @Billy Pilgrim.

Su EconLog, Bryan Caplan si domanda perché oggi la Spagna sia notevolmente più ricca di quasi tutti i paesi latino-americani, nonostante nel 1950 fosse molto più povera di Argentina, Cile, Messico, Perù, Uruguay, e Venezuela, e più o meno allo stesso livello di Colombia, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala, e Panama.

Gli risponde Jesús Fernández-Villaverde:

The combination of macroeconomic stability, freer flow of goods and capital, and stronger state capability triggered several decades of fast economic growth. Most people would naively mention tourism. These observers forget that Spain became a magnet for the European car industry. In 2017, Spain produced more passenger cars than France or the U.K. and nearly as many as the U.S. (although the U.S. number is biased by the importance of pickup trucks in the U.S. production mix). Even more importantly, Spain is one of leading world producers of car parts.

Why did Spain become a magnet for the car industry? Good legal environment (the “Decretos Ford” or “Ford Executive Order” are so-called because they were designed to convince Ford to open a gigantic factory in Valencia), macro stability, and access to the rest of the European market.

Spain’s exports are rather diversified. Spain, for example, exports more airplanes and airplane parts than olive oil. Many of your readers probably fly in Airbus planes (American Airlines has plenty of them!): well, a big chunk of them are made in Spain.

A similar history can be told about the petrochemical industry. Today Spain exports more, as a percentage of GDP, than France or Italy.

To a considerable extent, the economic history of Spain since 1959 is a textbook example of modern economic growth: get a few institutions right and ride them into prosperity. European transfers after Spain joined the E.U. in 1985 are a rounding error. And joining the E.U. was the consequence of growth, not the cause.

Immagine da David Samuel Santos, Flickr.