John H. Coatsworth is Dean of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and former Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University. Alan M. Taylor is Professor of Economics at the University of California, Davis.

Examining a number of key themes—from property rights in the Amazon to the rise and fall of the Gold Standard—this volume provides a series of engaging and original insights into the forces that have shaped Latin American economic development over the past two centuries. Undoubtedly, the striking feature that unites the diverse chapters is their dependence on the use of quantitative techniques, which allow the statistical relationships between economic variables to be ascertained. Combining these with an extensive reliance on freshly assembled numerical data, all of the contributors manage to shed new light on old questions.