Economic Growth

“Once you start thinking about (growth), it’s hard to think about anything else.”

Robert E. Lucas, Lectures on Economic Growth

Solow framework: Growth through accumulation•Constant returns to scale + Decreasing returns to capital steady state

•Augmenting Solow:

»Human capital

»Geography/Resources/Terms of trade

»Policies: Government consumption/Inflation/Openness/Aid

»Institutions: Property rights/Legal origin/Extractive institutions/ Inequality/Finance

Convergence and conditional convergence

Penn World Table (Heston and Summers): PPP measures of GDP

•Technological advance exogenous force driving growth

»Solow residual

Joseph Schumpeter1883 - 1950

Capitalist Dynamism -- Creative destructionA leap over marginalism and decreasing returns

•Obstreperous student at U. of Vienna•Advisor to Egyptian princess•Austrian Finance Minister•President of failed bank•Itinerant professor -- settled @ Harvard

Theory of Economic Development, 1912

Stationary state No profitsEnter the entrepreneur -- the will to conquer, to create

Innovation disruption of steady state Profits

Entry Boom & Elimination of Profits New Steady-state

Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 1942

Marx’s influence: Capitalism’s endogenous dynamism

But for Schumpeter, conflict and disruption Change and GROWTH

Capitalism’s paradox: Rationalism undermines private propertyCapitalism self-destructs

Joseph Schumpeter: Creative destruction• Leading economist of the 21st century?

• Capitalism, then, is by nature a form or method of economic change and not only never is but never can be stationary. And this evolutionary character of the capitalist process is not … due to a quasi-automatic increase in population and capital…The fundamental impulse that sets and keeps the capitalist engine in motion comes from new consumers, goods, the new methods of production and transportation, the new markets, the new forms of industrial organization that capitalist enterprise creates.

• The opening of new markets, foreign and domestic, from the craft shop and the factory to such concerns as US Steel illustrate the process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism.

• Every piece of business strategy … must be seen in its role in the perennial gale of creative destruction; it cannot be understood …on the hypothesis that there is a perennial lull.

More Schumpeter:• Economists are at long last emerging from the stage in which price

competition was all they saw. As soon as quality competition and sales effort are admitted into the sacred precincts of theory, the price variable is ousted from its dominant position.

• But in capitalist reality distinguished from its textbook picture, it is …the competition from the new commodity, the new technology, the new source of supply, the new type of organization -- competition which commands a decisive cost or quality advantage and which strikes not at the margins of the profits and the outputs of existing firms but at their foundations and very lives [that counts].

• …it becomes a matter of comparative indifference whether competition in the ordinary sense functions more or less promptly; the powerful lever that in the long run expands output and brings down prices is in any case made of other stuff.

• …competition of the kind we now have in mind acts not only when in being but also when it is merely an ever-present threat. It disciplines before it attacks.

Endogenous Growth• Adam Smith,1776 Pin factory Increasing returns• Alfred Marshall, 1890, External increasing returns• Allyn Young, 1928, Cumulative Causation

• Forward and backward linkages …knowledge spreads

• Kenneth Arrow, 1962, Learning - by - doing• Jane Jacobs, 1969, The Economy of Cities

• Agglomeration economies: ideas - interactions - applications - ideas

• Paul David, 1985, QWERTY: Network externalities• Paul Romer, 1986, Knowledge externalities

• Ideas embedded in cumulative capital endogenous growth

• Robert Lucas, 1988, Mechanics of Economic Growth• Learning from others CBD rents

On the mechanics of economic development1 Robert E. Lucas, Jr. University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA

AbstractThis paper considers the prospects for constructing a neoclassical theory of growth and international trade that is consistent with some of the main features of economic development. Three models are considered and compared to evidence: a model emphasizing physical capital accumulation and technological change, a model emphasizing human capital accumulation through schooling, and a model emphasizing specialized human capital accumulation through learning-by-doing.ReferencesArrow, 1962. Kenneth J. Arrow , The economic implications of learning by doing. Review of Economic Studies 29 (1962), pp. 155–173. Baumol, 1986. William J. Baumol , Productivity growth, convergence, and welfare: What the long-run data show. American Economic Review 76 (1986), pp. 1072–1085.Becker, 1964. Gary S. Becker , Human capital. , Columbia University Press for the National Bureau of Economic Research, New York (1964).Becker, 1981. Gary S. Becker , A treatise on the family. , Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA (1981).Becker and Barro, 1985. Gary S. Becker and Robert J. Barro , A reformulation of the economic theory of fertility. , University of Chicago, Chicago, IL (1985) Unpublished working paper .Boxall, 1986. Peter J. Boxall , Labor and population in a growth model. , University of Chicago, Chicago, IL (1986) Unpublished doctoral dissertation .Burmeister and Dobell, 1970. Edwin Burmeister and A. Rodney Dobell , Mathematical theories of economic growth. , Macmillan, New York (1970).DeLong, 1987. Bradford DeLong , Have productivity levels converged?. , MIT, Cambridge, MA (1987) Unpublished working paper .Denison, 1961. Edward P. Denison , The sources of economic growth in the United States. , Committee for Economic Development, New York (1961).Gordon, 1971. Robert J. Gordon , Measurement bias in price indexes for capital goods. Review of Income and Wealth, Income and wealth series 17 (1971).Griliches and Dale, 1967. Zvi Griliches and Jorgenson Dale , The explanation of productivity change. Review of Economic Studies 34 (1967), pp. 249–282.Harberger, 1984. Arnold C. Harberger, Editor, World economic growth, ICS Press, San Francisco, CA (1984).Jacobs, 1969. Jane Jacobs , The economy of cities. , Random House, New York (1969).Jacobs, 1984. Jane Jacobs , Cities and the wealth of nations. , Random House, New York (1984).Krueger, 1983. Anne O. Krueger , The developing countries' role in the world economy. , Lecture given at the University of Chicago, Chicago, IL (1983).Krugman, 1985. Paul Krugman , The narrow moving band, the Dutch disease and the competitive consequences of Mrs. Thatcher: Notes on trade in the presence of dynamic scale economies. , MIT, Cambridge, MA (1985) Unpublished working paper .Kuznets, 1959. Simon Kuznets , Six lectures on economic growth. , The Free Press, Glencoe (1959).Maddison, 1982. Angus Maddison , Phases of capitalist development. , Oxford University Press, New York (1982).Romer, 1986. Paul M. Romer , Increasing returns and long-run growth. Journal of Political Economy 94 (1986), pp. 1002–1037. Full Text via CrossRefRosen, 1976. Sherwin Rosen , A theory of life earnings. Journal of Political Economy 84 (1976), pp. 545–567.Schultz, 1963. Theodore W. Schultz , The economic value of education. , Columbia University Press, New York (1963).Stokey, 1987. Nancy L. Stokey , Learning-by-doing and the introduction of new goods. , Northwestern University, Evanston, IL (1987) Unpublished working paper .Summers and Heston, 1984. Robert Summers and Alan Heston , Improved international comparisons of real product and its composition: 1950–1980. Review of Income and Wealth, Income and wealth series 30 (1984).Tamura, 1986. Robert Tamura , On the existence of multiple steady states in one sector growth models with intergenerational altruism. , University of Chicago, Chicago, IL (1986) Unpublished working paper .Uzawa, 1965. Hirofumi Uzawa , Optimum technical change in an aggregative model of economic growth. International Economic Review 6 (1965), pp. 18–31. 1 This paper was originally written for the Marshall Lectures, given at Cambridge University in 1985. I am very grateful to the Cambridge faculty for this honor, and also for the invitation's long lead time, which gave me the opportunity to think through a new topic with the stimulus of so distinguished an audience in prospect. Since then, versions of this lecture have been given as the David Horowitz Lectures in Israel, the W.A. Mackintosh Lecture at Queens University, the Carl Snyder Memorial Lecture at the University of California at Santa Barbara, the Chung-Hua Lecture in Taipei, the Nancy Schwartz Lecture at Northwestern University, and the Lionel McKenzie Lecture at the University of Rochester. I have also based several seminars on various parts of this material.Journal of Monetary EconomicsVolume 22, Issue 1, July 1988, Pages 3-42

Paul Romer

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2007/08/romer_on_growth.html

1955 – Ph.D. U. of Chicago, 1983

Professor, Graduate School of Business, Stanford Univ.

Robert Lucas

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2007/02/lucas_on_growth.html

Nancy Stokey