Inspired by the debates and controversies accompanying the cinquentennial of the discovery of the Americas, the present volume deals with the historical roots of the divergent economic development in the north and south of the continent. Contrary to the prevailing tendency in research on this subject, the present study analyses both North and South America in a comparative perspective.

Its main focus is centered on the manifold institutional, economic, and cultural conditions in American history which in many respects account for the unequal economic development in the 19th and 20th centuries north and south of the Rio Grande or at least are able to lend such explanations some plausibility. Bearing no comparison with any other continent, the actual economic gap between North and South America presents a major challenge to scholarship, in tracing the causes of modern "development" and "underdevelopment" respectively.

Twelve American and European authors in the fields of History, Economic History and Economics question traditional interpretations and offer new approaches.