It wasn't particularly hard. Definitely simpler than the damage maximization models I did for a zombie game.
But did they really think that a sample of two, East Asia and Latin America, could provide any theoretical insights? (Admittedly, there are 10 or 20+ development histories, but the variables and causation links far exceed the sample size.) Quine must have heard about economics when he wrote his underdetermination thesis.
Of course, if I had to defend development economics, I would say that THAT is the best that we can get, and we work with what we can get. Then again, as more developing countries fail, development economics would slowly break out of it's empirical information poverty.
On a positive note, I found out that Korea isn't south of China, it's the the north! As well as Latin America, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Turkey, Western Europe, Thailand, Vietnam, and some vague inkling of Israel.
