Economic Development in the Americas since 1500: Endowments and Institutions

"This book brings together a number of previously published articles by Stanley L. Engerman and Kenneth L. Sokoloff. Its essays deal with differences in the rates of economic growth in Latin American and mainland North America, specifically the United States and Canada. It demonstrates how relative differences in growth over time are related to differences in the institutions that developed in different economies. This variation is driven by differences in major institutions - suffrage, education, tax policy, land and immigration policy, and banking and financial organizations. These factors, in turn, are all related to differences in endowments, climate, and natural resources. Providing a comprehensive treatment of its topic, the essays have been revised to reflect new developments and research"--

Stanley L. Engerman is John H. Munro Professor of Economics and Professor of History at the University of Rochester and visiting professor of Economics at Harvard University. He is the author of Slavery, Emancipation, and Freedom: Comparative Perspectives (2007); co-author of Time on the Cross (with Robert W. Fogel, 1974); co-author of Naval Blockades in Peace and War (with Lance Davis, 2007); and co-editor of Finance, Intermediaries, and Economic Development (with Philip T. Hoffman, Kenneth L. Sokoloff, and Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, Cambridge, 2003). He is a co-editor of the three-volume Cambridge Economic History of the United States (with Robert E Gallman) and of the multi-volume Cambridge World History of Slavery (with Keith Bradley, Paul Cartledge, and David Eltis). Kenneth L. Sokoloff (1952-2007) was a Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of California, Los Angeles. Among his many publications, he co-edited Slavery in the Development of the Americas and Unman Capital and Institutions: A Long-Run View (both wits David Eltis and Frank D. Lewis, Cambridge, 2004, 2009) and Finance, Intermediaries, and Economic Development (with Stanley L. Engerman, Philip T. Hoffman, and Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, Cambridge, 2003).