雅思泛读及精读材料.docVIP

Climate and Country Wealth A. Why are some countries stupendously rich and others horrendously poor? Social theorists have been captivated by this question since the late 18th century, when Scottish economist Adam Smith argued in his magisterial work The Wealth of Nations that the best prescription for prosperity is a free-market economy in which the government allows businesses substantial freedom to pursue profits. Smith, however, made a second notable hypothesis: that the physical geography of a region can influence its economic performance. He contended that the economies of coastal regions, with their easy access to sea trade, usually outperform the economies of inland areas. B. Coastal regions and those near navigable waterways are indeed far richer and more densely settled than interior regions, just as Smith predicted. Moreover, an area’s climate can also affect its economic development. Nations in tropical climate zones generally face higher rates of infectious disease and lower agricultural productivity (especially for staple foods) than do nations in temperate zones. Similar burdens apply to the desert zones. The very poorest regions in the world are those saddled with both handicaps: distance from sea trade and a tropical or desert ecology, The basic lessons of geography are worth repeating, because most economists have ignored them. In the past decade the vast majority of papers on economic development have neglected even the most obvious geographical realities. C. The best single indicator of prosperity is gross national product (GNP) per capita-- the total value of a country’s economic output, divided by its population. A map showing the world distribution of GNP per capita immediately reveals the vast gap between rich and poor nations. The great majority of the poorest countries lie in the geographical tropics. In contrast, most of the richest countries lie in the temperate zones. Among the 28 economies categorized as high income by