The argument of this paper is that there is nothing new about the political connection made between development and security. This has characterized US relations with Latin America grounded in the Monroe Doctrine (giving the US right to intervene) that dates back to 1823. The focus here is on...

We calibrate a simple neoclassical model of structural transformation to a set of Latin American countries and show that slow growth in agricultural productivity can substantially delay the development process and result in signi cant di erences in per capita incomes. Some of our results...