Developing Countries And Landlocked Developing Countries

Not all humans are born equal – more than 800 million people across the globe are currently living in extreme poverty, surviving on less than $1.25 a day, and there are currently 48 countries listed as a least developed country (LDC) by the United Nations Office of the High Representative for The Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States (UN-OHRLLS): countries that have a gross national income (GNI) per capita less than $1,035, human asset index (HAI) less than 60, meaning high infant mortality rate and percentage of the population undernourished, and low secondary school enrollment ratio and adult literacy rate, together with an economic vulnerability index (EVI) higher than 36 ("United";

Acemoglu and Robinson uses three pairs of countries that are in close proximity to each other, but have a huge difference in development level: Mexico and the United States of America; North and South Korea; Zimbabwe and Botswana. In the first pair of examples, Mexico was colonized under a system of slavery and extraction, in which Spanish used the existing slavery systems in Mexico to extract valuable resources such as gold and silver back to Spain, left behind a government for the elites, an absence of political rights to the general public, and ultimately lead to political turmoil and several dictatorships in Mexico, thus underdevelopment. To the north of Mexico’s boarder, North America was settled by the English with a system emphasizing on incentives – land in return for work – which eventually lead to a democratic constitution and political stability for hundreds of years, and opportunities for people to get rich. For North and South Korea, Acemoglu and Robinson argue that the ban on private property and markets in North Korea discouraged productivity and innovations, while a free market in South Korea led to investments and economic growth. In the case of Zimbabwe and Botswana, Zimbabwe’s institutions are extractive. The authors use the national lottery of Zimbabwe in 2000 as an example, in which the president of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, won the lottery, to show the corruptness of the Zimbabwe institutes. In contrast, the Republic of Botswana, a landlocked African country that is neighbored to Zimbabwe, kept inclusive institutions that were in place pre-colonialism, and through nationalization of the diamond mining industry of the country, the government of Botswana build a developed