This book explains how changing technology and economizing behaviour induce vast changes in productivity, resource allocation, labour utilization, and patterns of living. Economic growth is seen as a process by which businesses, regimes, countries, and the whole world pass through distinct epochs, each one emerging from its predecessor, each one creating the conditions for its successor. Viewed from a long-run perspective, growth must be characterized as an explosive process, marked by turbulent transitions in social and political life as societies adapt to new opportunities, the demise of old ways of living, and to the vast increase and redistribution of human populations. The book is based on a synthesis of classical economics and contemporary concepts of adaptation and economic evolution. Although it is based on analytical methods, the text has been stripped of all equations and with few exceptions is devoid of technical jargon.
Unlike the 1950s and 1960s, when the rising tide of economic growth lifted most economies, the last three decades have been characterized by a paradox of greater international economic integration as well as divergent economic growth performances. The growing North-South gap of the last two centuries has been moderated recently by the better economic performance of China, India and others in East Asia, implying the expansion of the 'middle income' category. This volume of analytical studies seeks to explain these major differences in economic performance in recent decades by considering the dynamics of international economic growth, diverging growth rates, economic structures, and sources of demand, successes and collapses in the developing world, and recent episodes of real income stagnation of countries. Several chapters critically review recent misleading claims and the conventional wisdom regarding the relationship of trade liberalization, financial development, development, aid, infrastructure spending, violent conflict, good governance, and industrial policy to economic growth.
From Nobel Prize–winning economist Daron Acemoglu, an incisive introduction to economic growth Introduction to Modern Economic Growth is a groundbreaking text from one of today's leading economists. Daron Acemoglu gives graduate students not only the tools to analyze growth and related macroeconomic problems, but also the broad perspective needed to apply those tools to the big-picture questions of growth and divergence. And he introduces the economic and mathematical foundations of modern growth theory and macroeconomics in a rigorous but easy to follow manner. After covering the necessary background on dynamic general equilibrium and dynamic optimization, the book presents the basic workhorse models of growth and takes students to the frontier areas of growth theory, including models of human capital, endogenous technological change, technology transfer, international trade, economic development, and political economy. The book integrates these theories with data and shows how theoretical approaches can lead to better perspectives on the fundamental causes of economic growth and the wealth of nations. Innovative and authoritative, this book is likely to shape how economic growth is taught and learned for years to come. Introduces all the foundations for understanding economic growth and dynamic macroeconomic analysis Focuses on the big-picture questions of economic growth Provides mathematical foundations Presents dynamic general equilibrium Covers models such as basic Solow, neoclassical growth, and overlapping generations, as well as models of endogenous technology and international linkages Addresses frontier research areas such as international linkages, international trade, political economy, and economic development and structural change An accompanying Student Solutions Manual containing the answers to selected exercises is available (978-0-691-14163-3/$24.95). See: https://press.princeton.edu/titles/8970.html For Professors only: To access a complete solutions manual online, email us at: [email protected]
The promise of upward mobility—the notion that everyone has the chance to get ahead—is one of this country's most cherished ideals, a hallmark of the American Dream. But in today's volatile labor market, the tradition of upward mobility for all may be a thing of the past. In a competitive world of deregulated markets and demanding shareholders, many firms that once offered the opportunity for advancement to workers have remade themselves as leaner enterprises with more flexible work forces. Divergent Paths examines the prospects for upward mobility of workers in this changed economic landscape. Based on an innovative comparison of the fortunes of two generations of young, white men over the course of their careers, Divergent Paths documents the divide between the upwardly mobile and the growing numbers of workers caught in the low-wage trap. The first generation entered the labor market in the late 1960s, a time of prosperity and stability in the U.S. labor market, while the second generation started work in the early 1980s, just as the new labor market was being born amid recession, deregulation, and the weakening of organized labor. Tracking both sets of workers over time, the authors show that the new labor market is more volatile and less forgiving than the labor market of the 1960s and 1970s. Jobs are less stable, and the penalties for failing to find a steady employer are more severe for most workers. At the top of the job pyramid, the new nomads—highly credentialed, well-connected workers—regard each short-term project as a springboard to a better-paying position, while at the bottom, a growing number of retail workers, data entry clerks, and telemarketers, are consigned to a succession of low-paying, dead-end jobs. While many commentators dismiss public anxieties about job insecurity as overblown, Divergent Paths carefully documents hidden trends in today's job market which confirm many of the public's fears. Despite the celebrated job market of recent years, the authors show that the old labor market of the 1960s and 1970s propelled more workers up the earnings ladder than does today's labor market. Divergent Paths concludes with a discussion of policy strategies, such as regional partnerships linking corporate, union, government, and community resources, which may help repair the career paths that once made upward mobility a realistic ambition for all American workers.
That the chapters in the volume cover such a wide range of important, often fundamental, topics is a proper tribute to Basil Moore s influence and contributions over his working life. From the foreword by G.C. Harcourt, Jesus College, Cambridge, UK During a distinguished career, Basil Moore has made numerous important contributions to macroeconomics and monetary economics, and is renowned as the progenitor of the horizontalist analysis of endogenous money. More recently, he has embraced complexity theory as part of an ongoing effort to understand macroeconomics as an evolving, path-dependent process. This book celebrates and explores Basil Moore s interests in and contributions to monetary and macroeconomic theory. Complexity, Endogenous Money and Macroeconomic Theory features original essays by internationally acclaimed and expert authors. It comprises a selection of papers on five distinct but interrelated themes: economic concepts, tools and methodology; complexity, uncertainty and path dependence; the macroeconomics of endogenous money; the macroeconomics of exogenous interest rates; and unemployment, inflation and the determination of aggregate income. These papers combine to provide a comprehensive methodological and theoretical discussion of the macroeconomics of a monetary production economy. The book will be of interest to professionals and research students in the fields of macroeconomics and monetary economics especially those with an interest in the Post Keynesian approach to analyzing these fields, including the wide audience that has been reached by the contributions of Basil Moore himself.
Nonlinearity, Complexity and Randomness in Economics presents a variety of papers by leading economists, scientists, and philosophers who focus on different aspects of nonlinearity, complexity and randomness, and their implications for economics. A theme of the book is that economics should be based on algorithmic, computable mathematical foundations. Features an interdisciplinary collection of papers by economists, scientists, and philosophers Presents new approaches to macroeconomic modelling, agent-based modelling, financial markets, and emergent complexity Reveals how economics today must be based on algorithmic, computable mathematical foundations
This book presents a select group of papers that provide a comprehensive view of the models and applications of chaos theory in medicine, biology, ecology, economy, electronics, mechanical, and the human sciences. Covering both the experimental and theoretical aspects of the subject, it examines a range of current topics of interest. It consid
This book considers the benefits of complexity, suggesting that economists should become a bit less certain in their policy conclusions. A broader range of models would include agent-based models, which use computational power to deal with specification of models that are far beyond analytic solution; and non-linear dynamic stochastic models, many of which are beyond analytic solution, but whose nature can be discovered by a combination of analytics and computer simulations.
Four stylised facts of aggregate economic growth are set up initially. The growth process is interpreted to represent transitional dynamics rather than balanced-growth equilibria. Against this background, the fundamental importance of subsistence consumption is comprehensively analysed. Subsequently, the meaning of the productive-consumption hypothesis for the intertemporal consumption trade-off and the growth process is investigated. Finally, the process of growth is analysed empirically by means of cross-sectional conditional convergence regressions with endogenous control variables.
