交易员分析员培训分资料系列历史数据和分析4.docVIP

November 2008 November 24, 2008 HYPERLINK /american_economic_history/2008/11lookin.html Looking South and Looking East Looking South: Engerman and Sokoloff: What Has Happened in the New World? Four areas: U.S.-Canada Mexico-Brazil Caribbean + slave Brazil Southern cone U.S.-Canada very rich: rest not so. Why? $80K per worker per year in the U.S. $10K-$20K more common in Latin America.. All have (or had) favorable land-labor ratios after conquest and plagues... All had abundant natural resources... All began with an abundance of land relative to labor... Southern cone keeping up with North America until the 1930s--I will not deal with that today... Two lines of explanation: problems of slavery and ex-slavery; problems of mainland Latin America The Puzzle: We Explain United States Growth as Markets + Resources = Accumulation + Technology But what happens when we go to Latin America? From the perspective of 1700, the United States is a marginal new-world economic area Yet Latin America today lags far behind the United States and Canada To explain U.S. vs. Latin America, you need institutions What are institutions? Where do institutions come from? Three Theories of Institutions: Legal origins (Shleifer et al.) Tropical diseases and grab and run (Acemoglu et al.) Engerman and Sokoloff A historians story--which means, its complicated Legal origins is broadly wrong--or at least overemphasized Grab-and-run due to tropical diseases also greatly overemphasized Factor endowments Indigenous population oppression Resource curse--slavery Slavery in the Connecticut River valley Slavery in New York City Key paragraph: The British colonies in the New World evolve quite distinct societies and sets of institutions The majority that failed shared certain salient features with Latin America [These features] allowed for average standards of living that were high at that time... [but] less well suited for the realization of sustained economic growth... Non-wh