Customer Reviews

How Latin America Fell Behind: Essays on the Economic Histories of Brazil and Mexico

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A very revealing comparative look at 18th century Latin American economic history and specifically Brazil's and Mexico's. The authors reject the traditional dependency explanation and instead explore the issue with a methodology grounded firmly in empiricism and neo-classical economic theory. Thoroughly researched (primary research predominates), the authors' conclusions, in total, are quite compelling.

I read this reasonable book, here in Brazil.This book has five authors.In fact each chapter has an author.The introduction and the chapter(and last) number six was made by Stephen Haber.
The table of Contents of this book is:
Contributors Xiii
1-Introduction:Economic Growth and Latin American Economic Historiography >I
STEPHEN HABER
2-Economic Development in Brazil, 1822-1913 >34
NATHANIEL H. LEFF.
3-A Macroeconomic Interpretation in nineteenth-Century Mexico >65
ENRIQUE CÁRDENAS.
4-Transport Improvement and Economic Growth in Brazil and Mexico >93
WILLIAM SUMMERHILL
5-Obstacles to the Development of Capital Markets in Nineteenth-Century Mexico >118
CARLOS MARICHAL.
6-Financial Markets and Industrial Development:A Comparative Study of Governmental Regulation, Financial Innovation, and Industrial Structure in Brazil and Mexico,1840-1930 >146
STEPHEN HABER.

This book has many authors and has weak and great parts.The correct idea was the lost of about one hundreed years of ecoomic progress in Brazil, Mexico and in fact, in all Latin America.Mexico was pooorer in 1860, than in 1760.Brazil hadn't an real industrial base in 1889 and was the last country in America, to end the slavery, in 1888.
United States had great advantages over Brazil:large coal and oil reserves, great quality of soils, temperate climate,etc.Even so, in 1750 per capita money was almost the same in Brazil and United States.In 1900 one american was richer than seven brazilians.
The main lesson of this book is the value of democracy and federalism.Until 1889, Brazil was under kings, that had no interest in economical development.The first brazilian king D. Pedro I was very corrupt.Mexico under dictators and civil war was doomed to poverty.
In Brazil , where provinces had no authonomy, until republic was created in 1889, the provinces and cities hadn't any money to education and health improvements.
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Among the best pats of this book are:
Page 51:"Another possibility for the government's lack of support for new railroads suggests that it would be naive to expect the Brazilian state in the nineteenth century to demonstrate an interest in promoting economic development.The country's political political and administrative elites are generally considered to have been more in self-aggrandizement and bureaucratic expansion than in economic development."
Page 54: "Between 1841 and 1889, the share of domestically held obrigations in the government's total debt-service payments ranged from 42 to 62 percent."
Page 151: "As late as 1888, Brazil had but 26 banks, whose combined capital totaled only 145,000" contos -rougly $48 million.Only seven of country's twenty states had any banks at all, and half of all deposits were held by a few banks in Rio de Janeiro".
Page 248:"As we discuss below, there is abundant evidence from the nineteenth century to support the view that free trade likely raised, not lowered, Brazilian national income.That is, the origins of Brazilian economic bakwardness are not to be found in "immiserating trade"(that is commerce that causes or increases misery) but are located in internals features of Brazil's economy largely unrelated to its external economic relations."
Page 256:"Finally, Brazil's relationship with Great Britain was not the causal factor of Brazil's slow transition to an industrial economy.Factors internal to Brazil, which grew out of country's domestic econmic and social structure,were far more important".