t overall, “the South’s economy was a unique case and ultimately realized a record of growth more like those of the northern United States or Canada.”The second piece compares the patterns of economic growth experienced by the North and the South. Coclanis points out numerous variations in the economies of the two regions from the seventeenth century and forward two hundred years. The factor endowments are noted here as well, while political factors play less of a role. Overall, the author concludes that the economic divergence of the North and South was quite large, and the differences most definitely outweigh the similarities.The two readings share both remarkable similarities as well as sharp differences. The bulk of the similarities lie in the nature of the essays and the methods and criteria used to draw comparisons. The two are extremely similar in that they both have the same main goal; that is, to compare the economic growth trends across two different regions while attempting to discern what factors were responsible for these differences. The first article compared the United States and Canada to the rest of the New World and identified certain aspects that caused the former to sustain higher economic growth than the latter. Likewise, the second essay compared the North and the South while attempting to pinpoint factors that caused the North to outdistance the South in terms of economic prosperity. Thus, one fundamental similarity between these two readings is that they both compared two regions, one more successful than the other at sustaining economic growth, and attempted to pinpoint the reasons for these discrepancies.A second significant likeness between the two readings lies in the fact that they both focused largely on one aspect – factor endowments – in trying to explain the gaps in economic growth. Both pieces seemed to place more of an emphasis on things such as climate, soil, th...
