Agricultural Export Diversification in Latin America and the Caribbean

Agriculture, in general, and agricultural exports in particular, have long been critical to economic growth and development in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Despite the importance of agriculture to the region and the vast amount of resources devoted to the promotion of agricultural export diversification in LAC, there has been virtually no research undertaken to assess the degree to which the agricultural export structures in LAC countries have in fact diversified. Using disaggregate data on agricultural exports over the 1961-2000 period for 10 LAC countries, entropy-based measures of diversification are computed and analyzed. The empirical results show that the post-1985 period has witnessed some degree of agricultural export diversification in LAC. However, the results are mixed particularly for the smaller Organization of Eastern Caribbean Countries.