Aims to develop a bird's eye view on current status and growth potential of developing economies by means of highly condensed international comparative statistics in order to postulate broad hypotheses for the analyses in the subsequent chapters. The data suggest that wide differences in economic growth rates among developing countries are due little to differences in natural resource endowments, but may instead be explained by investment in both physical and human capital. Such broadly defined capital formation depends not so much on the level of per capita income as it does on institutions...

Aims to develop a bird's eye view on current status and growth potential of developing economies by means of highly condensed international comparative statistics in order to postulate broad hypotheses for the analyses in the subsequent chapters. The data suggest that wide differences in economic growth rates among developing countries are due little to differences in natural resource endowments, but may instead be explained by investment in both physical and human capital. Such broadly defined capital formation depends not so much on the level of per capita income as it does on institutions and policies.