When bad economics is good politics / Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Hilton L. Root -- Order, disorder, and economic change: Latin America versus North America / Douglass C. North, William Summerhill, and Barry R. Weingast -- Political institutions, political survival, and policy success / Bruce...

Despite significant gains in promoting economic growth and living conditions (or "human progress") globally over the last twenty-five years, much of the developing world remains plagued by poverty and its attendant problems, including high rates of child mortality, illiteracy, environmental...

PART ONE. DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH. -- Patterns of development -- Measuring economic growth and development -- Economic growth: concepts and patterns -- Theories of economic growth -- States and markets -- PART TWO. DISTRIBUTION AND HUMAN RESOURCES. -- Inequality and poverty -- Population --...

International influence -- Explaining growth -- Comparative colonialism -- Statistical regularities -- Nested inference -- Destroying Mozambique -- Constructing Korea -- Brazilian variations -- Holistic empiricism.