Can an evolutionary approach to development predict post‐war economic growth?
用人口和农业密度作为早期发展的代理变量，检验了工业化前发展水平差异能否解释发展中国家近几十年经济增长率的差异，并展示了结果的稳健性。
Might differences in levels of development prior to the era of industrialisation explain some of the dramatic differences in rates of economic growth across developing countries in recent decades? This article explores the logic behind such a conjecture, and presents evidence that it is true, using population and agrarian densities as proxies for early development. Basic growth regressions are estimated for a sample of developing countries in 1960–90, and for provinces in one country, China, in 1978–92. The robustness of the results to the inclusion of other measures, including ethnic heterogeneity and ‘social capability’, is also shown.