According to Professor Jeffrey Sachs, convergence is not occurring everywhere due to the closed economic policy of some developing countries, which could be solved through free trade and openness.
In the post-war period (1945–1960) examples include West Germany, France and Japan, which were able to quickly regain their prewar status by replacing capital that was lost during World War II.
For example, Alexander Gerschenkron states that governments can substitute for missing prerequisites to trigger catch-up growth.
A hypothesis by economic historians Kenneth Sokoloff and Stanley Engerman suggested that factor endowments are a central determinant of structural inequality that impedes institutional development in some countries.
Sokoloff and Engerman proposed that in the 19th century, countries such as Brazil and Cuba with rich factor endowments such as soil and climate are predisposed to a guarded franchise with limited institutional growth.
Land that is suitable for sugar and coffee such as Cuba experienced economies of scale from the establishment of plantation that in turn created the small elite families with vested interest in guarded franchise.
Sokoloff and Engerman explained this convergence in their article "History Lessons: Institutions, Factor Endowments, and Paths of Development in the New World."
They explained that the United States and Canada started out as two of the poorest colonies in the New World but grew faster than other countries due to their soil qualities.
They argued that the United States and Canada had land suitable for growing wheat which meant that they had small scale farming, since wheat does not benefit from economies of scale, and this led to a relatively equal distribution of wealth and political power enabling the population to vote for broad public education.