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On the Nature of Economic Growth
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
Extract
Economists today are increasingly concerned with the problem of economic growth. They are inquiring whether it is possible for our economic system to continue the seemingly miraculous business of putting more people to work, making more goods, and adding to the national income. Back in the 1930’s their major concern, however, was with depression and instability. The economy then was heading downward in what seemed to be a never ending plunge. The rate of population growth had dropped rapidly, and nineteenth-century chatter about race suicide revived. The limits of our territorial frontiers had long been reached. National output moved sluggishly, and the unemployed huddled with puzzled brows around makeshift fires and apple boxes. Then came the war, and there was a burgeoning need for men in jobs. But, despite expanded income and overtime pay, fewer goods were available than might have been expected. This was the anomaly of inflation, and economists had on their hands a new, though not unfamiliar, problem, which stayed with them even after the war.
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- Copyright © 1957 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
References
1. Cf. Theory of Economic Development (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1934).
2. A careful if somewhat ponderous worker, Dr. Kuznets has most recently set forth his ideas in a long essay, "Toward a Theory of Economic Growth," which appeared in the Columbia University Bicentennial Conference publication, National Policy for Economic Welfare, ed. Robert Lekachman (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1955). Hints of this atti tude appeared in his earlier volume, Economic Change (New York: W.W. Norton Co., 1953); there are also similar views in his "International Differences in Capital Formation and Financ ing," in the National Bureau of Economic Research volume, Capital Formation and Economic Growth (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1955).
3. Cf. Joseph A. Schumpeter, "Theoretical Problems of Economic Growth," Journal of Economic History Supplement, 1947.
4. Cf. The Theory of Economic Growth (London: Allen & Unwin, 1955).
5. Moses Abramovitz, another NBER economist, argues in a recent paper, Proceedings of the American Economic Association, May, 1956, that not only was the rate of growth slowed down in recent history but that its progress has not been a smooth one.
6. New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1955.
7. The existence of which is almost universal, according to Ragnar Nurske's Problems of Capital Formation in Underdeveloped Countries (London: Blackwell, 1953).
8. Cf. An International Economy (New York Harper & Bros., 1956).
9. Cf. his article, "The Entrepreneur in American Capital Formation," in the NBER volume.
10. Cf. "An Essay in Dynamic Theory" and "Supplement on Dynamic Theory"in Eco nomic Essays (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1952). The first of these was originally published in 1939. Others who have written on this problem are Evsey Domar, "Expansion and Employment," American Economic Review, March, 1947, and "Problem of Capital Ac cumulation," American Economic Review, December, 1948, and M. Kalecki, Theory of Economic Dynamics (London: Allen & Unwin, 1954).
11. Economic Growth and Instability (New York: W. W. Norton Co., 1956).
12. See Domar's article, "Expansion and Employment" in American Economic Review, March, 1947.
13. Cf. Towards a Dynamic Economics (New York: Macmillan Co., 1948).
14. Cf. his paper, "Structural Analysis of Real Capital Formation," in the NBER volume.
15. Cf. Trends and Cycles in Economic Activity (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1956).
16. Cf. The Accumulation of Capital (New York: Macmillan Co., 1956).
17. Op. cit.