Examines differences in the rates of economic growth in Latin America and mainland North America since the seventeenth century.

Stanley L. Engerman is John H. Munro Professor of Economics and Professor of History at the University of Rochester. He is the author of Slavery, Emancipation, and Freedom: Comparative Perspectives (2007), Naval Blockades in Peace and War (with Lance Davis, 2007) and Finance, Intermediaries, and Economic Development (with Philip T. Hoffman, Kenneth L. Sokoloff and Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, Cambridge University Press, 2003). He is a co-editor of the three-volume Cambridge Economic History of the United States (with Robert E. Gallman) and The Cambridge World History of Slavery (with Keith Bradley, Paul Cartledge and David Eltis).

Beginnings: memoirs by two of Ken Sokoloff's friends and teachers Claudia Goldin and Stanley L. Engerman; Acknowledgments; Seminar presentations; Sources of funding; List of tables; List of figures; Introduction; 1. Paths of development: an overview; 2. Factor endowments and institutions with Stephen Haber; 3. The role of institutions in shaping factor; 4. The evolution of suffrage institutions; 5. The evolution of schooling: 1800-1925 with Elisa V. Mariscal; 6. Inequality and the evolution of taxation Kenneth L. Sokoloff and Eric M. Zolt; 7. Land and immigration policies; 8. Politics and banking systems Stephen Haber; 9. Five hundred years of European colonization; 10. Institutional and non-institutional explanations; 11 Epilogue: institutions in political and economic development; Bibliography; Prior publications.