myriad other structural factors are the causes of slow economic development or a perennial failure to develop or sustain economic growth (Lehman, 2002). The other side of the issue does not deny that such factors are important; however, they do not consider them to be insurmountable problems. The general contention put forward by the proponents of this alternative side of the issue is that economies fail to develop or fail to sustain development for a quite different reason. They contend that economies fail to develop or to sustain development because their societal and cultural preferences foster the development of barriers to those agents in an economy who would take the actions (take risks, innovate, and create) that would spur economic growth (Walsh & Kirchhoff, 2002). The issue of why some economies fail to develop or fail to sustain development is examined in this paper.
In a recent paper, Roll and Talbott (2003) suggested that societal factors and cultural preferences are prime culprits as causes of the absence of economic growth in many developing countries. They found three specific factors to be most relevant. These factors were (a) property rights (s plus for economic growth when they are recognized in an economy), (b) black market activity (a minus when it is tolerated in an economy, and (g) governmental regulation (the favorite whipping boy of today's neoconservative political establishment even though they also regulate the economy). Roll and Talbott (2003) used data from the Index of Economic Freedom (Miles, Feulner, & O'Grady, 2004) to test their hypotheses. Roll and Talbott (2001) issued a somewhat shorter study on the same topic in 2001. The statistical analyses presented in the 2001 study were reprinted in the 2003 study, which although it had a slightly modified title, drew the same conclusions based on the same statistical analyses. This situation does call either the conclusions or the statistics int...