For decades, United Fruit Company exploited banana workers across its Latin American plantations. Diana Van Patten (Yale University) explains how and why one of the most notorious multinational corporations of the twentieth century needed to treat workers better in Costa Rica (38:45).

Read more…

• Esteban Méndez and Diana Van Patten. Forthcoming. Multinationals, Monopsony, and Local Development: Evidence from the United Fruit Company. Econometrica.
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez. 1967. One Hundred Years of Solitude. Harper Perennial Modern Classics (English translation).