Note: This is post #78 in a weekly video series on basic economics.

You could fit most of the U.S., China, India, and a lot of Europe, into Africa. But if pare Africa to Europe, Europe has two to three times the length of coastline that Africa. Why does this matter? As this video by Marginal Revolution University explains, geography can have profound effects on a nation’s economic growth.

(If you find the pace of the videos too slow, I’d mend watching them at 1.5 to 2 times the speed. You can adjust the speed at which the video plays by clicking on “Settings” (the gear symbol) and changing “Speed” from normal to 1.25, 1.5 or 2.)

Click here to see other videos in the Introduction to Economics series.