Two Tales of Entrepreneurship: Barbados, Jamaica, and the 1973 Oil Price Shock

Abstract

From 1961 to 2011, Barbados’s GDP per capita grew roughly two times faster than Jamaica’s. As a result, the income gap between Barbados and Jamaica is now more than three times larger than at the time of independence. Qualitative historical analysis, exploiting the interplay between public policy and entrepreneurship before and after the 1973 oil price shock, demonstrates that pro-entrepreneurial policies in Barbados versus anti-business policies in Jamaica explain in part the economic divergence of these two islands.