Saturday, November 14, 2009

The Giambattista Grand Theorem on World Development (GGTWD)


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2 comments:

Sean said...

This doesn't line up perfectly with temperature maps or wealth maps, but an interesting idea. I suppose motivation is part of that - when food is falling off trees year round, who needs to work extra hard during summer to save up for winter?

Take a look at World temp map against a world wealth map or even a wealth inequality map. Looks vaguely right, but I'm sure someone has done some regression testing out there...

Unknown said...

The map was largely in jest, but I think in some ways it holds up. Maybe it's my personal dislike of hellish heat, but hotter areas tend to develop less than colder areas, though that is a large generalization and could be a case of correlation =/= causation.

It wasn't about food dropping off the tree, as much as "It's too hot out so I don't want to do a lot of manual labor like build roads." Opportunity cost of not working is lower. Though the fact that these countries were naturally "blessed" with a natural endowment of swamps and jungle that make road-building difficult is also true.