Economic Growth and Development

more competition on world markets and access to new technologies. These
links are shown in Figure 11.1.

Geography: definitions

Geographical factors can be defined as ‘physical attributes tied to specific
locations’, such as latitude,distance from coastlines, altitude and access to
navigab le rivers (fixed factors) or climate, soil quality and rainfall (slowly
changing). Thankfully the statistical work for testing the impact of geography
on economic growth is more straightforward. Most geographical factors are
not influenced by economic growth so the direction of causation is much
clearer. Chapter 10 notes that good institutions may stimulate growth but also
that high income levels may be necessary to afford the court and legal systems
required to protect property, so separating these two-way influences in statisti-
cal work is difficult. There are still problems in distinguishing geography as a
deep determinant of growth. The original cause may be something quite differ-
ent. Africa, for example, has many landlocked countries, but this is a product
of how boundaries were drawn up in the nineteenth century, so what appears
today as a fixed factor of geography should more properly be thought of an
outcome of colonial history.

232 Patterns and Determinants of Economic Growth

Figure 11.1 Geography as a deeper determinant of economic growth

GDP growth

See Chapter 13

See Chapter 4 See Chapter 5

Figure 11.1

Openness labour supplyPopulation/ Productivity(TFP)

Geography