What Factors Shape Growth Patterns of Countries?

What factors shape growth patterns of countries?

When discussing the factors that go into a country or region's economic growth the obvious four responses must be at the forefront, which are as follows: available land, labor, available capital, and technological availability (Franko). These are four factors that Latin America is abundant in, but instead of remaining competitive with the United States and Canada like they were in the 19th century they fell drastically behind. In order to understand why this happened, we will review the historic economic evolution of several Latin American countries to see the similarities and differences in the choices they made as opposed to the choices the United States made, which led us to become a world power and them struggling with many of the same problems they had centuries ago.

First and foremost, the time period of 1820-1900 in Latin America was marked by an independence movement, which caused obvious fighting and therefore caused much havoc on the economies of these places (Chasteen). Additionally, war also depletes the labor force and available capital. This marked a change because up to this point Latin America's economy was completely export or trade based and now it was shifting to agriculture and mining (Chasteen). Two ways that these Latin American countries paid for these internal wars was by taking out government loans, primarily from Britain, and investing in the slave trade, both of which are still influential in Latin America today (Winn). Also, these independence wars left an enormous gap between the ruling elite and the poor majority, which is something that would not be changed for a long time. As it says in the text, this lack of political change seriously hindered economic transformation (Franko).

Brazil was slightly different that the other countries in the region because it was colonized by the Portuguese instead of the Spanish. There are many similarities with the way Brazil's economy functioned with that of the rest of the region, but there is a major difference that occurs near the beginning. Independence left a different social legacy for Brazil than it did for other countries in the region (Skidmore). In Brazil, independence did not put in place a ruing elite, but instead they acquired a ruling elite, which was the Portuguese crown and those involved with that, and also a monarchy (Skidmore). Another difference is that independence did not hurt Brazil's labor population as much as other countries because it was so involved in the slave trade until after other countries, which did give it an advantage in labor and capital (Skidmore). Other than these main differences, the economy of Brazil developed in a very similar way as the other countries, by focusing on single commodity exports, in their case coffee. As international trade increased, Brazil, like other countries