Lectures on Economic Growth

230 Pages·2004·31.597 MB·English

by  Robert E. Lucas Jr.

The most exciting field in economics dur-
ing the past fifteen years has been that of
economic growth. Economists are now be-
ginning to find plausible answers to such
profound questions as why some countries
experienced rapid growth in the postwar
era. while others stagnated; and why per
capita income, which had been constant
for most of human history, suddenly took
off in the eighteenth century, the phe-
nomenon known as the Industrial Revo-
lution. In this book, the distinguished
economist Robert Lucas brings together
several of his seminal papers on the sub-
ject, together with the Kuznets Lectures
that he gave at Yale University, to pre-
sent a coherent view of economic growth.
The chapters progress from a general
theory ofhow growth could be sustained
and why growth rates might differ in dif-
ferent countries, to a model of exception-
al growth in certain countries in the
twentieth century, to an account ofthe
take-off ofgrowth in the Industrial Rev-
olution, and finally to a prediction about
patterns ofgrowth in this new century.
The framework in all the chapters is a
model with accumulation ofboth physi-
cal and human capital, with emphasis on
the external benefits ofhuman capital
through diffusion ofnew knowledge or
on-the-job learning, often stimulated by
trade. The Kuznets Lectures consider the
interaction ofhuman capital growth and
the demographic transition in the early
stages ofindustrialization. In the final
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LECTURES ON ECONOMIC GROWTH