Moses Abramovitz

Thinking about Growth

The essays in this book explore the forces behind modern economic growth and, in particular, the causes of the extraordinary surge of growth since the Second World War. The introductory essay is an extended treatment of how economists now view the growth process and its causes. Other essays consider the contributions of capital formation, education, and the changed nature of industries and occupations. Professor Abramovitz asks why elevated incomes failed to bring the social progress and personal satisfaction that people had looked for. The final chapters in the book take up the causes of our discontent and consider whether the Welfare State has itself become an obstacle to further economic progress.The essays in this book explore the forces behind modern economic growth and, in particular, the causes of the extraordinary surge of growth since the Second World War. The introductory essay is an extended treatment of how economists now view the growth process and its causes. Other essays consider the contributions of capital formation, education, and the changed nature of industries and occupations. Professor Abramovitz asks why elevated incomes failed to bring the social progress and personal satisfaction that people had looked for. The final chapters in the book take up the causes of our discontent and consider whether the Welfare State has itself become an obstacle to further economic progress.

The Search for the Sources of Growth: Areas of Ignorance, Old and New

Many economic historians, like most economists, depend on standard growth accounts to provide some quantitative description of the proximate sources of growth, but this is misleading. American growth experience illustrates the difficulty. The seeming major contribution of tangible capital accumulation to nineteenth-century growth was the consequence of scale-dependent and capital-using technological progress. The large twentieth-century contributions of education and R&D conceal technologys new intangible capital-using bias. Additionally, reverse forces run from capital accumulation to technological progress. Without a greater understanding of these interactions, our knowledge of even the proximate sources of growth is incomplete.

Rapid Growth Potential and its Realisation: The Experience of Capitalist Economies in the Postwar Period

Dramatic statements about the remarkable growth of the industrialised market economies are by now superfluous. The forces which account for this notable experience, however, still challenge explanation. And without a well-tested explanation, we are in a poor position to say whether rapid growth has now come to an end or whether it is likely to be resumed. Equally, we are in a poor position to suggest what policies might regenerate and sustain rapid growth were that an agreed aim of public policy.

Resources and Output Trends in the United States since 1870.

Introduction This paper is a very brief treatment of three questions relating to the history of our economic growth since the Civil War: (1) How large has been the net increase of aggregate output per capita, and to what extent has this increase been obtained as a result of greater labor or capital input on the one hand and of a rise in productivity on the other? (2) Is there evidence of retardation, or conceivably acceleration, in the growth of per capita output? (3) Have there been fluctuations in the rate of growth of output, apart from the shortterm fluctuations of business cycles, and, if so, what is the significance of these swings? The answers to these three questions, to the extent that they can be given, represent, of course, only a tiny fraction of the historical experience relevant to the problems of growth. Even so, anyone acquainted with their complexity will realize that no one of them, much less all three, can be treated satisfactorily in a short space. I shall have to pronounce upon them somewhat arbitrarily. My ability to deal with them at all is a reflection of one of the more important, though one of the less obvious, of the many aspects of our growing wealth, namely, the accumulation of historical statistics in this country during the last generation. For the most part, the figures which I present or which underlie my qualitative statements are taken directly from tables of estimates of national product, labor force, productivity, and the like compiled by others.

The Nature and Significance of Kuznets Cycles

Both are generalizations of apparently irregular behavior. Total output rarely rises or falls at the same rate for two consecutive months, and it seldom moves in the same direction for many months together. These irregular movements, however, are not without pattern. The month-to-month movements are, for periods of time, predominantly upward, and these periods of expansion are succeeded by other periods in which movements are predominantly downward. These are the business cycles of capitalist economic life. They are fluctuations of aggregate output in which other aspects of economic activity join; they are widely diffused through the many sectors of the economy; and they recur at intervals which are as long as ten to twelve years but are normally less than five or six. And when we consider periods longer than those of business cycles, there emerges a persistent underlying tendency for output to rise. Although the rate of growth is not constant, the average level of output during any business-cycle period is normally higher than that attained during the preceding cycle period. The persistence of growth is one characteristic of the primary secular trend of output in capitalist countries in the era of industrialization.

Economic Growth and Its Discontents

Publisher Summary This chapter reviews the concept of economic growth and the growing sense of discontentment with it. Economic growth has been the prime goal of economic policy for a long time, and it has also been the prime criterion for judging the success of the economic performance of a country. An increase in national product per head is supposed to mean an increase in economic welfare; it does not necessarily mean an increase in peoples total welfare. Economists have relied, however, on a practical judgment, namely, that a change in economic welfare implies a change in total welfare in the same direction, if not in the same degree. It has been noted that in developed countries in the west, theres a growing disenchantment with the current notion of economic development. Substantial reasons for this sense of disappointment and disenchantment are the impact of growth on the environment and the ability of developed countries to sustain growing populations in the face of declining sources of primary products and of mounting wastes. In the West, poverty is observed to be as widespread as are the social problems associated with it, crime, drug addiction, and the rest, at least as intense as they are. Also, there is a growing decline in happiness even amongst the populace who are enjoying the luxuries available in the developed countries of the west.