The U.S. economic development in the nineteenth century was characterized by the westward movement of population and the accumulation of productive land in the West. This paper presents a model of migration and land improvement to identify the quantitatively important forces driving this...

The main purpose of this book is to explain Mexico's substandard economic activity by applying the foundational factors approach primarily to Mexico and, for purposes of comparison, secondarily to the United States. The argument is that, unlike the United States, Mexico has been shaped by an...