Stanley L. Engerman is John H. Munro Professor of Economics and Professor of History at the University of Rochester. He is the author of Slavery, Emancipation, and Freedom: Comparative Perspectives (2007), Naval Blockades in Peace and War (with Lance Davis, 2007) and Finance, Intermediaries, and Economic Development (with Philip T. Hoffman, Kenneth L. Sokoloff and Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, Cambridge University Press, 2003). He is a co-editor of the three-volume Cambridge Economic History of the United States (with Robert E. Gallman) and The Cambridge World History of Slavery (with Keith Bradley, Paul Cartledge and David Eltis). Kenneth L. Sokoloff (1952–2007) was a Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of California, Los Angeles. Among his many publications, he co-authored Human Capital and Institutions: A Long-Run View (with David Eltis and Frank D. Lewis, Cambridge University Press, 2009) and Finance, Intermediaries, and Economic Development (with Stanley L. Engerman, Philip T. Hoffman and Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, Cambridge University Press, 2003).

'This volume is both a magisterial and a profound reassessment of the role of institutions in the social, political, and economic evolution of the Americas from Columbian contact to the present. There is nothing in the literature that approaches the range and detail of the cross-country comparisons across the Americas offered by Engerman and Sokoloff and their coauthors. The broad conclusions have enormous implications for understanding the development paths of societies everywhere.' David Eltis, Robert W. Woodruff Professor of History, Emory University

• Beginnings: memoirs by two of Ken Sokoloff's friends and teachers Claudia Goldin and Stanley L. Engerman; Acknowledgments; Seminar presentations; Sources of funding; List of tables; List of figures; Introduction; 1. Paths of development: an overview; 2. Factor endowments and institutions with Stephen Haber; 3. The role of institutions in shaping factor; 4. The evolution of suffrage institutions; 5. The evolution of schooling: 1800–1925 with Elisa V. Mariscal; 6. Inequality and the evolution of taxation Kenneth L. Sokoloff and Eric M. Zolt; 7. Land and immigration policies; 8. Politics and banking systems Stephen Haber; 9. Five hundred years of European colonization; 10. Institutional and non-institutional explanations; 11 Epilogue: institutions in political and economic development; Bibliography; Prior publications.