Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/89360 
Year of Publication: 
2010
Series/Report no.: 
LEM Working Paper Series No. 2010/21
Publisher: 
Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Pisa
Abstract: 
In 1950, Latin American countries capabilities were promising, and the subcontinent was thought to have a big potential for convergence. In order to understand why this prediction was not fulfilled, we apply in this paper the framework set by Fagerberg and Srholec (2008(24)). Our study of the economic evolution of Latin America during the Golden Age (1950-1975) is based on historical data on economic, political and social variables from 18 countries. We use a factor analysis to classify our 20 indicators into five dimensions: the level of industrialization, human capital, the macroeconomic fundamentals, politics and religion. We find that only the quality of human capital and the presence of Roman Catholics significantly and positively affected Latin American economic growth in this period, while the determinants traditionally put forward in the empirical growth literature, such as technical change and openness, did not. Finally, the positive correlation between the religion and education variables reveals that this result is partly related to the role of the Catholic Church as an educational institution.
Subjects: 
Growth
Development
Convergence
Factor Analysis
Latin America
Economic History
Golden Age
JEL: 
N26
O54
C38
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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