The historical context -- Two centuries of South American reflections on the development gap between the United States and Latin America / Tulio Halperin Donghi -- Looking at them: a Mexican perspective on the gap with the United States / Enrique Krauze -- Explaining Latin America's lagging...

Preface -- List of acronyms -- Geography and the colonial legacy -- Export led growth and the origins of protectionism -- Import substitution industrialization (ISI) -- Debt crises and the lost decade -- Poverty : origins and persistence -- The political economy of Latin American development --...

Latin America’s economic performance is mediocre at best, despite abundant natural resources and flourishing neighbors to the north. The perplexing question of how some of the wealthiest nations in the world in the nineteenth century are now the most crisis-prone has long puzzled economists...