May 2012: When Will the Economy Return to “Normal”?
The greatest difficulty in assessing the current economic situation is that this cycle is not the traditional boom-bust cycle, as anyone following economic news lately can attest. The ongoing situation is better described as a structural social and economic adjustment driven by both demographics and a reshaping of PR’s productive base that will, undoubtedly, redefine what “normal” means in PR. Both are partly dependent on each other but also respond to different contexts. Demographics, in particular, is a formidable analytical challenge as the economic consequences of changes in the Island’s resident population are hard to even imagine. The “allocation of resources” question, the second issue at hand, will determine the Island’s economic landscape in coming decades. This issue of the Pulse examines the signs that can we expect as the economy begins to re-write what normalcy is. These might surprise you.