Productivity, Technology and Economic Growth

Productivity, Technology and Economic Growth presents a selection of recent research advances on long term economic growth. While the contributions stem from both economic history, macro- and microeconomics and the economics of innovation, all papers depart from a common viewpoint: the key factor behind long term growth is productivity, and the latter is primarily driven by technological change. Most contributions show implicitly or explicitly that technological change is at least partly dependent on growth itself. Furthermore, technology appears to interact strongly with investment in physical and human capital as well as with changes in historical, political and institutional settings. Together these papers are an up-to-date account of the remarkable convergence in theoretical and empirical work on productivity and growth over the past decades. The first part deals with the characteristics of growth regimes over longer periods, ranging from 20 years to two centuries. The next four chapters study the determinants of productivity growth and, in some cases, productivity slowdown during the last quarter of the twentieth century. The final five chapters focus on the role of technology and innovation as the key determinants of growth. Productivity, Technology and Economic Growth is, therefore, a welcome collection for academic scholars and graduate students in economics, history and related social sciences as well as for policy makers.

Bart van Ark is professor in Economics of Productivity and Technology Policy. He is associated with the Groningen Growth and Development Centre, and The Conference Board, a business research organisation in Europe and the United States.Simon K. Kuipers is professor in Macroeconomics and presently Chairman of the Executive Board of the University of Groningen. He is the Honorary Editor of De Economist, Quarterly Review of the Royal Netherlands Economic Association.Gerard Kuper is assistant professor in Macroeconomics. Kuper is associated with the CCSO Centre for Economic Research and research fellow of the Research School on Systems, Organisation and Management at the University of Groningen.