Sources and Consequences of Economic Growth

INTRODUCTION

Today we start to study economic growth and development. You may read the text chapter identified below in the homework section and watch the related videos for help in understanding this material. This page contains all the information you need for today's class. Use the table of contents on the right to help you navigate.

HOMEWORK

Read Chapters 25 and 26 in Mankiw and watch the following videos.

ASSESSMENTS AND ACTIVITIES

Problem of the Day: Not today!

Lecture: Sources of Economic Growth and Consequences of Economic Growth

ENRICHMENT

• Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson wrote Why Nations Fail in which they argued that societies with more pluralistic ("inclusive") institutions are more likely to experience economic growth in the long-run than societies with non-inclusive ("extractive") institutions.

  • Click here to listen to an interview with Daron Acemoglu about the book.

  • Click here to see a critique of this thesis from Jeffrey Sachs.

  • And here to see Acemoglu and Robinson's response to Sachs.

• Related Readings

  • Ending Poverty by 2030?

    • Measuring the Benefits of Tech Tools

  • "In Praise of Cheap Labor"

  • "The Case for Sweatshops"

  • Industrial Revolution and the Standard of Living

  • Jobs, Productivity, and the Great Decoupling ("Race Against the Machine")

  • When Cheap Foreign Labor Gets Less Cheap ("Re-shoring")

  • Income Inequality in the U.S.

  • The Academic Fight Over U.S. Inequality

  • Economic Growth and the Environment

  • Free Market Environmentalism

    • Growth isn’t enough to help the middle class

  • Global Warming

  • Economic Growth

  • Empirics of Economic Growth

  • Natural (land) Resources

  • Population

  • Saving

  • Telecommunications (Globalization)

  • Space Bridging (Globalization)

  • A Cell Phone for Every Woman

  • The German Economic Miracle

  • Japan after WWII

  • The Industrial Revolution and the Standard of Living

  • Education

  • Immigration

  • Transition Economies

  • Global Attitudes Regarding Sustainable Development

  • The Magic of Microcredit

  • Human Capital

  • Pass the Books, Hold the Oil

  • What is the Wealth of a Nation?

  • Human Capital

  • The Capitalist's Dilemma

  • "Robots and Robber Barons" (U.S. Income Inequality)

  • Human and Physical Capital (More on "Robots and Robber Barons")

  • In Shift of Jobs, Apple Will Make Some Macs in U.S. ("Re-shoring")

  • Is Growth Over? #1

  • Is Growth Over? #2

• Related Videos