Productivity, Technology and Economic Growth

✍ Scribed by Bart van Ark, Simon K. Kuipers, Gerard H. Kuper (auth.), Bart van Ark, Simon K. Kuipers, Gerard H. Kuper (eds.)

• Publisher: Springer US
• Year: 2000
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 407
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

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.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages i-xvii
Introduction....Pages 1-16
Front Matter....Pages 17-17
Interpreting the “One Big Wave” in U.S. Long-term Productivity Growth....Pages 19-65
Surveying Two Centuries of Dutch Growth, 1807–1995....Pages 67-89
Institutions and Economic Growth in Postwar Europe....Pages 91-128
Front Matter....Pages 129-129
The Interaction between Business Cycles and Productivity Growth....Pages 131-157
Productivity, Income and Technological Change in the Netherlands: Causes and Explanations of Divergent Trends....Pages 159-186
Labour Productivity Growth in Dutch Business Services....Pages 187-226
Productivity and Specificity in Factor Inputs....Pages 227-250
Front Matter....Pages 251-251
Knowledge, Technology, and Economic Growth during the Industrial Revolution....Pages 253-292
Human Capital, R&D, Productivity Growth and Assimilation of Technologies in the Netherlands....Pages 293-315
The Effect of Pharmaceutical Utilisation and Innovation on Hospitalisation and Mortality....Pages 317-344
Productivity, R&D Spillovers and Trade....Pages 345-360
Do Technology Spillovers Matter for Growth?....Pages 361-389
Back Matter....Pages 391-400

✦ Subjects

Economic Growth; Methodology and the History of Economic Thought; Industrial Organization