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The concept of evaluation of any existing or proposed policy only has meaning in relation to some goal. Further, if the goal used for the evaluation is not the actual goal of the actor involved, any conclusions about the effectiveness or appropriateness of the policies are irrelevant for that actor. It is very common for people around the world to evaluate the economic policies of Cuba relative to claimed effects on the rate of growth of Gross Domestic product (GDp), followed by discussions on what the real effect on the GDp of the policies has been or will be. Given that Cuba has very explicitly stated that its economic goal is a prosperous, sustainable socialism, such considerations cannot constitute economic evaluations of policies for the country. A proper evaluation is, however, complicated by the multi-dimensional nature of the Island's economic goal. This article considers six of Cuba's most fundamental and commonly discussed economic policies as examples, to argue that in practice it is very often, though not necessarily always, possible to design policies in such a way that their evaluation relative to all the dimensions of Cuba's economic goal does not involve the potential problem of the "trade-off between dimensions" inherent to any multi-dimensional goal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is widespread discussion both within and outside Cuba concerning what direction the Cuban economy will go under its new interim president, Raúl Castro. This very short paper is intended to contribute one piece of information that is needed to intelligently discuss that issue: where Cuba's economy stands today. Its intention is to compactly provide as much current statistical information on a number of longstanding contentious economic issues in Cuba, as is allowed by its short length. It concludes that the evidence supports that there indeed has been real and meaningful accelerated improvement in the Cuban economy in recent years, and at the same time, Cuba remains far from being able to meet many of its citizen's economic needs in accord with its own principals of human development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]