In contrast with European countries, Latin American economies largely specialized in commodity exports, showed high levels of urbanization and high transports costs (both domestic and international). This new research on Latin America provides a new perspective on the economic history of these regions and also offers new insights on how such forces interact in the non-core, peripheral countries. In that sense, natural resources location, huge differences in climatic conditions, industrial backwardness in most of these countries and areas with low population density leads us to a new set of questions and tentative answers. weiterlesen