Puzzles of economic growth

Looking at the economic growth of
seemingly similar countries one can find striking
differences. Why has Australia gotten so much ahead of New
Zealand, in spite of the latter being held up as a paragon
of free market reform? How is it possible that Austria, with
its persistently oversized state enterprise sector, has
managed to (nearly) catch up with Switzerland? How can we
account for the differences in economic growth between
Estonia and Slovenia, and which of these two countries has
been more successful at systemic transformation? Why is
Mexico so much poorer than Spain, despite having been
wealthier all the way into the 1960s? Why has Venezuela,
which in 1950 had a per capita income higher than that of
Norway and remains a major exporter of oil, slipped behind
Chile? Why is Costa Rica lagging behind Puerto Rico, even
though in the 1970s the U.S. territory's fast
development slowed to a crawl and is now far below other
comparable island economies? Why has 'communist'
China outstripped 'capitalist' India? Why has
Pakistan's growth lagged behind that of Indonesia, even
though the latter suffered one of the deepest crises in
world economic history in the years 1997-98? Why, even
before the 2010 earthquake, the Dominican Republic has been
visited by several dozen times more tourists than Haiti,
despite being situated on the same island? This book strives
to answer these (and many other) questions. They are all
part of a broader question that we wish to address: how do
differences in economic growth arise?