A vivid account of the past, present, and future of economic growth, showing how and why we must continue to pursue it while responding to the challenges it creates.
Over the past two centuries, economic growth has freed billions from the struggle for subsistence and made our lives far healthier and longer. Yet prosperity has come at a price: environmental destruction, desolation of local cultures, the rise of vast inequalities and destabilizing technologies. Faced with such damage, many now claim that the only way forward is through “degrowth,” deliberately shrinking our economic footprint. But to abandon humanity’s progress would be folly. Instead, Daniel Susskind argues, we must keep growth but redirect it, making it better reflect what we truly value.
In a sweeping analysis full of historical insight, Susskind shows how policymaking came to revolve around a single-minded quest for greater GDP. This is a surprisingly recent development: economic growth was barely discussed until the second half of the twentieth century. And our understanding of what drives it is more recent still. Only lately have we come to see how humankind emerged from its millennia of stagnation: through the sustained discovery of powerful and productive new ideas.
This insight undermines the mantra that “we cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet,” for the world of ideas is infinitely vast. Yet growth’s critics are right to insist that we can no longer focus on its upsides alone. We must confront the tradeoffs, Susskind contends: sometimes, societies will have to deliberately pursue less growth for the sake of other goals. These will be moral decisions, not simply economic ones, demanding the engagement not just of politicians and experts but of all citizens.
Growth and Distribution is the first text designed to support a comprehensive advanced undergraduate or graduate course on the theory, measurement, and history of economic growth. The book, which presents Classical and Keynesian in parallel with Neoclassical approaches to growth theory, introduces students to advanced tools of intertemporal economic analysis through carefully developed treatments of land- and resource-limited growth, and covers money and growth, the impact of government debt and social security systems on growth, and theories of endogenous growth and endogenous technical change. The models emphasize rigorous reasoning from basic economic principles and insights without excessive formal complication, and respond to students' interest in the history and policy dilemmas of real-world economies. Surveys of data and discussion of empirical controversies are closely integrated with the development of theoretical tools. The book includes access to a comprehensive data set extending the Penn World Tables in a form suitable for exploration in hands-on student projects.
In addition to carefully worked examples showing how to use the analytical techniques presented, the book contains many problems suitable for inclusion in problem sets and examinations. Detailed answers to these problems are also provided.
A major revision of an established textbook on the theory, measurement, and history of economic growth, with new material on climate change, corporate capitalism, and innovation.
Authors Duncan Foley, Thomas Michl, and Daniele Tavani present Classical and Keynesian approaches to growth theory, in parallel with Neoclassical ones, and introduce students to advanced tools of intertemporal economic analysis through carefully developed treatments of land- and resource-limited growth. They cover corporate finance, the impact of government debt and social security systems, theories of endogenous technical change, and the implications of climate change. Without excessive formal complication, the models emphasize rigorous reasoning from basic economic principles and insights, and respond to students’ interest in the history and policy dilemmas of real-world economies.
In addition to carefully worked out examples showing how to use the analytical techniques presented, Growth and Distribution presents many problems suitable for inclusion in problem sets and examinations. Detailed answers to these problems are available. This second edition includes fresh data throughout and new chapters on climate change, corporate capitalism, models of wealth inequality, and technical change.
What determines the rate of growth, the distribution of income, and the structure of relative prices under capitalism? What, in short, makes capitalist economies tick? This watershed treatise analyzes the answers to these questions provided by three major theoretical traditions: neoclassical, neo-Marxian, and neo-Keynesian. Until now, the mutual criticism exchanged by partisans of the different traditions has focused disproportionately on the logical shortcomings of rival theories, or on such questions as whether or not input–output relationships can be described by a continuous-substitution production function.
In this book, these are at best secondary issues. The real distinguishing features of the theories, for Stephen Marglin, are their characterization of labor markets and capital accumulation. For clarity, Marglin first sets out the essential features of each theory in the context of a common production model with a single good and a fixed-coefficient technology. He then formalizes the different theories as alternative ways of closing the model. In subsequent chapters he examines the effects of relaxing key simplifying assumptions, in particular the characterization of technology and the homogeneity of output and capital. And although his primary emphasis is theoretical, he does not ignore the problem of empirically testing the theories. Finally, he synthesizes the insights of the neo-Marxian and neo-Keynesian models into a single model that transcends the shortcomings of each taken separately.
Marglin anticipates that partisans of the different traditions will agree on one point: each will allow that the book reveals the shortcomings of the other theories but will insist that it fails utterly to reflect the power and majesty of one’s own particular brand of truth. Growth, Distribution, and Prices will be controversial, but it will not be ignored.
Central to the research that went into the preparation of this monograph is the relationship between economic development and equality. To determine and characterize that relationship Morris Singer focuses on the various components of equality at different stages of development. The author particularly explores the behavior of income distribution, together with its bearing on the components of aggregate demand.
Mexico provided an excellent case to examine in depth because of its impressive growth and the fact that it experienced Latin America’s first successful twentieth-century revolution.
Although the Revolution of 1910 hastened social equality and introduced other changes that stimulated Mexico’s economic growth, it could not prevent a serious increase in the inequality of income distribution. By the early 1960s the government found it necessary to rectify this increasing imbalance through a program of expenditures designed to counteract widespread poverty and weak aggregate demand. To ward off inflation, this program in turn could be implemented only by tax reform.
In discussing the relationship between development and equality in its various dimensions, noneconomic as well as economic, this monograph points out that, at the time of this study, government policies in Mexico were dictated by an elite concerned primarily with the country’s economic advancement. Singer concludes that if programs of government expenditure and tax reform succeed in remedying the inequalities of income distribution, this could gradually make possible the development of a more genuine political as well as economic democracy.
This book reflects Singer’s interest in the relationship between equality and development. It is the result of five months of intensive in-residence study in Mexico, financed in part by a grant from the Social Science Research Council.
From reviews of previous editions:
“The history of economic thought to end all histories of economic thought.”—Robert D. Patton, Journal of Economic Literature
“The book is in the grand tradition of the history of doctrines. It is a history of economic thought broadly conceived—and superbly written to boot. It is not to much to say that Spiegel’s book will become and remain a leading text in the field.”—Warren J. Samuels, Social Science
The author conveys the essence of an idea simply and clearly, yet in a graceful style.”—William F. Kennedy, Journal of Economic Literature
In The Growth of the Liberal Soul, David Walsh confronts a core difficulty of the liberal democratic tradition in explaining and justifying itself. Acknowledging the incompleteness of liberal order as a theoretical explication of its underlying beliefs, Walsh analyzes contemporary debates about the foundations of liberal democratic politics. The widespread abandonment of the search for foundations by John Rawls, Richard Rorty, Michael Oakeshott, and the deconstructionists has been interpreted as signifying the absence of any sustaining inner resources. The result has been the confusion of contemporary liberal democratic self-understanding, which cannot make sense of its own extraordinary historical success nor apparently prevent the evident unraveling of its own moral code. It is this state of crisis from which Walsh's study takes its point of departure.
Unique in combining contemporary political relevance with historical depth, The Growth of the Liberal Soul brings together two approaches that are often treated separately. Walsh elaborates on the existential core of the liberal political tradition by way of an investigation of the historical sources and the raging contemporary debates.
While many scholars have been content to call attention to the dependence of liberal politics on transcendent faith, Walsh studies the progress of experiential reality by which that connection is concretely effected in life. The Growth of the Liberal Soul will be of interest to all readers, especially those interested in the relationship between religion and politics.
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