term paper on economic growth

What is economic growth? And why is it so important?

The goods and services that we all need are not just there – they need to be produced – and growth means that their quality and quantity increase..

Good health, a place to live, access to education, nutrition, social connections, respect, peace, human rights, a healthy environment, and happiness. These are just some of the many aspects we care about in our lives.

At the heart of many of these aspects that we care about are needs for which we require particular goods and services . Think of those that are needed for the goals on the list above – the health services from nurses and doctors, the home you live in, or the teachers who provide education.

Poverty, prosperity, and growth are often measured in monetary terms, most commonly as people’s income. But while monetary measures have some important advantages, they have the big disadvantage that they are abstract. In the worst case, monetary measures – like GDP per capita – are so abstract that we forget what they are actually about: people’s access to goods and services.

The point of this text is to show why economic growth is important and how the abstract monetary measures tell us about the reality of people’s material living conditions around the world and throughout history:

• In the first part, I want to explain what economic growth is and why it is so difficult to measure.
• In the second part, I will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of several measures of growth, and you will find the latest data on several of these measures so that we can see what they tell us about how people’s material living conditions have changed.

What are these goods and services that I’m talking about?

Have a look around yourself right now. Many of the things you see are products that were produced by someone so that you can use them: the trousers you are wearing, the device you are reading this on, the electricity that powers it, the furniture around you, the toilet that is nearby, the sewage system it is connected to, the bus or car or bicycle you took to get where you are, the food you had this morning, the medications you will receive when you get sick, every window in your home, every shirt in your wardrobe, and every book on your shelf.

At some point in the past, many of these products were not available. The majority did not have access to the most basic goods and services they needed. A recent study on the history of global poverty estimates that just two centuries ago, roughly three-quarters of the world "could not afford a tiny space to live, food that would not induce malnutrition, and some minimum heating capacity.” 1

Let’s look at the history of the last item on that list above, books.

A few centuries ago, the only way to produce a book was for a scribe to copy it word-for-word by hand. Book production was a slow process; it took a scribe about eight months of daily work to produce a single copy of the Bible. 2

It was so laborious that only very few books were produced. The chart shows the estimates of historians. 3

But then, in the 15th century, the goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg combined the idea of movable letters with the mechanism that he knew from the wine presses in his hometown. He developed the printing press. Gutenberg developed a new production technology, and it changed things dramatically. Instead of spending months to produce one book, a worker was now able to produce several books a day.

As the printing press spread across Europe, book production soared. Books, which were previously only available to a tiny elite, became available to more and more people.

This is one example of how growth is possible and what economic growth is : an increase in the production of goods and services that people produce for each other.

A list of goods and services that people produce for each other

Before we get to a more detailed definition of economic growth, it’s helpful to remind ourselves of the astonishingly wide range of goods and services that people produce. I think this is helpful because measures of economic output can easily become abstract. This abstraction means we easily lose the mental connection to the goods and services such measures actually talk about.

This list of goods and services isn’t meant as a definitive list, but it helped me to think about the relevance of poverty and growth: 4

At home: Light in your home at night; the sewage system; a shower; vacuum cleaner; fridge; heating; air conditioning; electricity; windows; a toilet – even a flush toilet; soap; a balcony or a garden; running water; warm water; cutlery and dishes; a hut – or even a warm apartment or house; an oven; sewing machine; a stove (that doesn’t poison you ); carpet; toilet paper; trash bags; music recordings or even online streaming of the world’s music and film; garbage collection; radio; television; a washing machine; 5 furniture; telephone; a comfortable bed, and a room for one’s own.

Food: The most fundamental need is to have enough food. For much of human history, a large share of people suffered from hunger , and millions still do .

But we also need to have a richer and more varied diet to get all of the nutrients we need. Unfortunately, billions still suffer from micronutrient deficiency .

Also, think of clean drinking water; reliable markets and stores with a wide range of available goods; food that rarely poisons you (pasteurized milk, for example); spices; tea and coffee; kitchen utensils and practical ingredients (from a bag of flour to canned soups or a yogurt); chocolate and sweets; fresh fruit and vegetables; bread; take-away food or the possibility to go to a restaurant; ways to protect your food from spoiling (from the cold chain that delivers the goods to the cellophane to wrap it with); wine or beer; fertilizer ( very important); and tractors to work the fields.

Knowledge: Education from primary up to university level; books; data that allows us to understand the world around us; newspapers; vocational training; kindergartens; and scientific knowledge to understand ourselves and the world around us.

Infrastructure: Public transportation with buses, subways, and trains; roads; paved roads; airplanes; bridges; financial services (including bank accounts, ATMs, and credit cards); cities; a network of competent workers that can help you to fix problems; postal services (that delivers fast); national parks; street cleaning; public swimming pools (even private pools); firefighters; parks; online shopping; weather forecasts; and a waste management system.

Tools and technologies: Pencils, ballpoint pens, and paper; lawnmowers; cars; car mechanics; bicycles; power tools like drills (even battery-powered ones); a watch; computers and laptops; smartphones (with GPS and a good camera); being able to stay in touch with distant friends or family members (or even visiting them); GPS; batteries; telephones and mobiles; video calls; WiFi; and the internet right here.

Social services: Caretakers for those who are disabled, sick, or elderly; protection from crime; non-profit organizations financed by the public, by donations or by philanthropies; insurance (against many different risks); and a legal system with judges and lawyers that implement the rule of law.

There is also a wide range of transfer payments, which in themselves are not services (they are transfers) but which become more affordable as a society becomes more prosperous: sick leave and disability benefits; unemployment benefits; and being able to help others with a regular donation of some of your income to an effective charity . 6

Life and free time : tents; travel and holidays; surfboards; skis; board games; hotels; playgrounds; children’s toys; courses to learn hobbies (from painting to musical instruments or courses on the environment around us); a football; pets; the cinema, theater or a music concert; clothes (even comfortable and good-looking ones that keep you warm and protect you from the rain); shoes (even shoes for different purposes); shoe repair; the contraceptive pill and the ability to choose if and when to have children; sports classes from rock climbing to pilates and yoga; cigarettes (not all goods that people produce for each other are good for them); 7 a musical instrument; a camera; and parties to celebrate life.

Health and staying well: Dentists; antibiotics; surgeries; anesthesia; mental health care from psychologists and psychiatrists; vaccines; public sewage; a haircut; a massage; midwives; ambulances; modern medicine; band-aids; pharmaceutical drugs; sanitary pads; toothbrushes; dental floss (some do floss); disinfectants; glasses; sunglasses; contact lenses; hearing aids; and hospitals – including very well-equipped, modern hospitals that offer CT scans, which include intensive care units and allow heart or brain surgery or organ transplants.

Specific needs and wishes: Most of the products listed above are generally helpful to people. But often, the goods and services that are most important to one individual are very specific.

As I’m writing this, I have a big cast on my left leg after I broke it. These days, I depend on products that I had no use for just three weeks ago. To move around, I need two long crutches, and to prevent thrombosis, I need to inject a blood thinner every day. After I broke my leg, I needed the service of nurses and doctors. They had to rely on a range of medical equipment, such as X-ray machines. To get back on my feet, I might need the service of physiotherapists.

We all have very specific needs or wishes for particular goods and services. Some needs arise from bad luck, like an injury. Others are due to a new phase in life – think of the specific goods and services you need when you have a baby or when you take care of an elderly person. And yet others are due to specific interests – think of the needs of a fisherman, or a pianist, or a painter.

All of these goods and services do not just magically appear. They need to be produced. At some point in the past, the production of most of them was zero, and even the most essential ones were extremely scarce. So, if you want to know what economic growth means for your life, look at the list above.

What is economic growth?

So, how can we define what economic growth is?

A definition that can be found in so many publications that I don’t know which one to quote is that economic growth is “an increase in the amount of goods and services produced per head of the population over a period of time.”

The definition in the Oxford Dictionary is almost identical: “Economic growth is the increase in the production of goods and services per head of population over a stated period of time”. And the definition in the Cambridge Dictionary is similar. It defines growth as “an increase in the economy of a country or an area, especially of the value of goods and services the country or area produces.”

In the following footnote, you find more definitions. Bringing these definitions together and taking into account the economic literature more broadly, I suggest the following definition: Economic growth is an increase in the quantity and quality of the economic goods and services that a society produces.

I prefer a definition that is slightly longer than most others. If you want a shorter definition, you can speak of ‘products’ rather than ‘goods and services’, and you can speak of ‘value’ rather than mentioning both the quantity and quality aspects separately.

The most important change in quantity is from zero to one when a new product becomes available. Many of the most important changes in history became possible when new goods and services were developed; think of antibiotics, vaccines, computers, or the telephone.

You find more thoughts on the definition of growth in the footnote. 8

What are economic goods and services?

Many definitions of economic growth simply speak of the production of ‘goods and services’ collectively. This sidesteps a key difficulty in its definition and measurement. Economic growth is not concerned with all goods and services but with a subset of them: economic goods and services.

In everything we do – even in our most mundane activities – we continuously ‘produce’ goods and services in some form. Early in the morning, once we’ve brushed our teeth and made ourselves toast, we have already produced one service and one good. Should we count the tooth-brushing and the toast-making towards the economic production of the country we live in? The question of where to draw the line isn’t easy to answer. But we have to draw the line somewhere. If we don’t, we end up with a concept of production that is so broad that it becomes meaningless; we’d produce a service with every breath we take and every time we scratch our nose.

The line that we have to draw to define the economic goods and services is called the ‘production boundary’. The sketch illustrates the idea. The production boundary defines those goods and services that we consider when we speak about economic growth.

For a huge number of goods or services, there is no question that they are of the ‘economic’ type. But for some of them, it can be complicated to decide on which side of the production boundary they fall. One example is the question of whether the production of illegal goods should be included. Another is whether production within a household should be included – should we consider it as economic production if we grow tomatoes in our backyard and make soup from them? Different authors and different measurement frameworks have given different answers to these questions. 9

There are some characteristics that are helpful in deciding on which side of the boundary a particular product falls. 10 Economic goods and services are those that can be produced and that are scarce in relation to the demand for them. They stand in contrast to free goods, like sunlight, which are abundant, or those many important aspects in our lives that cannot be produced, like friendships. 11 Our everyday language has this right: we don’t refer to the sun or our friendships as a good or service that we ‘produce’.

An economic good or service is provided by people to each other as a solution to a problem they are faced with, and this means that they are considered useful by the person who demands it.

A last characteristic that helps decide whether you are looking at an economic product is “delegability”. An activity is considered to be production in an economic sense if it can be delegated to someone else. This would include many of the goods and services on that long list we considered earlier but would exclude your breathing, for example.

Because economic goods are scarce in relation to the demand for them, human effort is required to produce them. 12 A shorter way of defining growth is, therefore, to say that it is an increase in the production of those products that people produce for each other.

The majority of goods and services on that long list above are uncontroversially of the economic type – everything from the light bulbs and furniture in your home to the roads and bridges that connect your home with the rest of the world. They are scarce in relation to the demand for them and have to be produced by someone; their production is delegable, and they are considered useful by those who want them.

It’s worth recognizing that many of the difficulties in defining the production boundary arise from the effort to make measures of economic production as comparable as possible.

To give just one concrete example of the type of considerations that make the discussion about specific definitions so difficult, let’s look at how the production boundary is drawn in the housing sector.

Imagine two countries that are identical except for one aspect: home ownership. In Country A, everyone rents their homes, and the total sum of annual rent amounts to €2 billion per year. In Country B, everyone owns their own home, and no one pays rent. To provide housing is certainly an economic service, but if we only counted monetary transactions, then we would get the false impression that the value of goods and services in Country A is €2 billion higher than in Country B. To avoid such misjudgment, the production boundary includes the housing services that are provided without any monetary transactions. In National Accounts, statisticians take into account the “imputed rental value of owner-occupied housing” – those households who own their home get assigned an imputed rental value. In the imagined scenario, these imputed rents would amount to €2 billion in Country B so that the prosperity of people in these two countries would be judged to be identical.

It is the case more broadly that National Account figures (like GDP) do include important non-market goods and services that are not included in household survey measures of people’s income. GDP does not only include the housing services by owner-occupied housing but also the provision of most goods and services that are provided by the government or nonprofit institutions.

How can we measure economic growth?

Many discussions about economic growth are extraordinarily confusing. People often talk past one another.

I believe the key reason for this is that the discussion of what economic growth is gets muddled up with how it is measured .

While it is straightforward enough to define what growth is, measuring growth is very, very difficult.

In the worst cases, measures of growth are mixed up with a definition of growth. Growth is often measured as an increase in income or inflation-adjusted GDP per capita. But these measures are not the definition of it – just like life expectancy is a measure of population health but is certainly not the definition of population health.

To see how difficult it is to measure growth, take a moment to think about how you would measure it. How would you determine whether the quantity and quality of all economic goods and services produced by a society increased or decreased over time?

Finding a measure means that you have to find a way to express a huge amount of relevant information in a single metric. As the sketch shows, you have to first measure the quantity and quality of all the many, many goods and services that get produced and then find a way to aggregate all of these measurements into one summarizing metric. No matter what measure you propose for such a difficult task, there will always be problems and shortcomings in any proposal you might make.

In the following section, I will show four possible ways of measuring growth and present some data for each of them to see how they can inform us about the history of material living conditions.

Measuring economic growth by tracking access to particular goods and services

One possible way to measure growth is to make a list of some specific products that people want and to see what share of the population has access to them.

We do this very often at Our World in Data . The chart here shows the share of the world population that has access to four basic resources. All of these statistics measure some particular aspect of economic growth.

You can switch this chart to any country in the world via the “Change country” option. You will find that, judged by this metric, some countries achieved rapid growth – like Indonesia – while others only saw very little growth, like Chad.

The advantage of measuring growth in this way is that it is concrete. It makes clear what exactly is growing, and it’s clear which particular goods and services people gain access to.

The downside is that it only captures a small part of economic growth. There are many other goods and services that people want in addition to water, electricity, sanitation, and cooking technology. 13

You could, of course, expand this approach of measuring growth to many more goods and services, but this is usually not done for both practical and ethical considerations:

One practical reason is that a list of all the products that people value would be extremely long. Keeping lists that track people’s access to all products would be a daunting task: hundreds of different toothbrushes, thousands of different dentists, hundreds of thousands of different dishes in different restaurants, and many millions of different books. 14 If you wanted to measure growth across all goods and services in this way, you’d soon employ half the country in the statistical office.

In practice, any attempt to measure growth as access to particular products, therefore, means that you look only at a relatively small number of very particular goods and services that statisticians or economists are interested in. This is problematic for ethical reasons. It should not be up to the statisticians or economists to determine which few products should be considered valuable.

You might have realized this problem already when you read my list at the beginning of this text. You might have disagreed with the things that I put on that list and thought that some other goods and services were missing. This is why it is important to track incomes and not just access to particular goods: measuring people’s income is a way of measuring the options that they have rather than the choices that they make. It respects people’s judgment to decide for themselves what they find most important for their lives.

On our site, you find many more such metrics of growth that capture whether people have access to particular goods and services:

• This chart shows the share of US households having access to specific technologies.
• This chart shows the share that has health insurance.
• This chart shows access to schools.

Measuring economic growth by tracking the ratio between people’s income and the prices of particular goods and services

To measure the options that a person’s income represents, we have to compare their income with the prices of the goods and services that they want. We have to look at the ratio between income and prices.

The chart here does this for one particular product – books – and brings us back to the history of growth in the publishing sector that we started with. 15 Shown is the ratio between the average income that a worker receives and the price of a book. It shows how long the average worker had to work to buy one book. Note that this data is plotted on a logarithmic axis.

Before the invention of the printing press in the 15th century, the price was often as high as several months of work. The fact that books were unaffordable for almost everyone should not be surprising. It corresponds to what we’ve seen earlier that it took a scribe several months to produce a single book.

The chart also shows how this changed when the printing press increased the productivity of publishing. As the labor required to produce a book declined from many months of work to less than a day, the price fell from months of wages to mere hours.

This shows us how an innovation in technology raises productivity and how an increase in production makes it more affordable. How it increases the options that people have.

Global inequality: How do incomes compare in countries around the world?

In the previous section, we measured growth as the ratio between income and the price of one particular good. But of course, we could do the same for all the many goods and services that people want. This ratio – the ratio between the nominal income that people receive and the prices that people have to pay for goods and services – is called ‘real income’ . 16

Real income = Nominal income / price of goods and services

Real income grows when people’s nominal income increases or when the prices of goods and services decrease.

In contrast to many of the other metrics on Our World in Data, a person’s real income does not matter for its own sake but because it is a means to an end. A means to many ends, in fact.

Economic growth – measured as an increase in people’s real income – means that the ratio between people’s income and the prices of what they can buy is increasing: goods and services become more affordable, and people become less poor. It is because a person has more choices as their income grows that economists care so much about these monetary measures of prosperity.

The two most prominent measures of real income are GDP per capita and people’s incomes, as determined through household surveys.

They are shown in this chart.

Before we get back to the question of economic growth, let’s see what these measures of real income tell us about the economic inequality in the world today.

Both measures show that global inequality is very large. In a rich country like Denmark, an average person can purchase goods and services for $54 a day, while the average Ethiopian can only afford goods and services that cost $3 per day.

Both measures of real incomes in this chart are measured in international dollars, which means that they take into account the level of prices in each country (using purchasing power parity conversion factors). This price adjustment is done in such a way that one international-$ is equivalent to the purchasing power of one US-$ in the US . An income of int.-$3 in Ethiopia, for example, means that it allows you to purchase goods and services in Ethiopia that would cost US-$3 in the US . All dollar values in this text are given in international dollars, even though I often shorten it to just the $-sign.

If you are living in a rich country and you want to have a sense of what it means to live in a poor country – where incomes are 20 times lower – you can imagine that the prices for everything around you suddenly increase 20-fold. 17 If all the things you buy suddenly get 20-times more expensive your real income is 20-times lower. A loaf of bread doesn’t cost $2 but $40, a pair of jeans costs $400, and an old car costs $40,000. If you ask yourself how these price increases would change your daily consumption and your day-to-day life, you can get a sense of what it means to live in a poor country.

The two shown measures of real income differ:

• The data on the vertical axis is based on surveys in which researchers go from house to house and ask people about their economic situation. In some countries, people are asked about their income, while in other countries, people are asked about their expenditure – expenditure is income minus savings. In poor countries, these two measures are close to each other since poor people do not have the chance to save much.
• On the other hand, GDP per capita starts at the aggregate level and divides the income of the entire economy by the number of people in that country. GDP per capita is higher than per capita survey income because GDP is a more comprehensive measure of income. As we’ve discussed before, it includes an imputed rental value of owner-occupied housing and other differences, such as government expenditure.

Income as a measure of economic prosperity is much more abstract than the metrics we looked at previously. The comparison of incomes of people around the world in this scatterplot measures options, not choices. It shows us that the economic options for billions of people are very low. The majority of the world lives on very low incomes of less than $20, $10, or even $5 per day. In the next section, we’ll see how poverty has changed over time.

• GDP per capita vs. Daily income of the poorest 10%
• GDP per capita vs. Daily average income

Global poverty and growth: How have incomes changed around the world?

Economic growth, as we said before, is an increase in the production of the quantity and quality of the economic goods and services that a society produces. The total income in a society corresponds to the total sum of goods and services the society produces – everyone’s spending is someone else’s income. This means that the average income corresponds to the level of average production, so that the average income in a society increases when the production of goods and services increases.

Average production = average income

In this final section, let’s see how incomes have changed over time, first as documented in survey incomes and then via GDP per capita.

Measuring economic growth by tracking incomes as reported in household surveys

The chart shows the income of people around the world over time, as reported in household surveys. It shows the share of the world population that lives below different poverty lines: from extremely low poverty lines up to $30 per day, which corresponds to notions of poverty in high-income countries .

Many of the poorest people in the world rely on subsistence farming and do not have a monetary income. To take this into account and make a fair comparison of their living standards, the statisticians who produce these figures estimate the monetary value of their home production and add it to their income.

Again, the prices of goods and services are taken into account: these are measures of real incomes. As explained before, incomes are adjusted for price differences between countries, and they are also adjusted for inflation. As a consequence of these two adjustments, incomes are expressed in international dollars in 2017 prices, which means that these income measures express what you would have been able to buy with US dollars in the US in 201 7.

Global economic growth can be seen in this chart as an increasing share of the population living on higher incomes. In 2000 two thirds of the world lived on less than $6.85 per day. In the following 19 years, this share fell by 22 percentage points.

In 2020 and 2021 — during the economic recession that followed the pandemic — the size of the world economy declined, and the share of people in poverty increased . As soon as global data for this period is available, we will update this chart.

The data shows that global poverty has declined, no matter what poverty line you choose. It also shows that the majority of the world still lives on very low incomes. As we’ve seen, we can describe the same reality from the production side: the global production of the goods and services that people want has increased, but there is still not enough production of even very basic products. Most people in the world do not have access to them.

An advantage of household survey data over GDP per capita is that it captures the inequality of incomes within a country. You can explore this inequality with this chart by switching to see the data for an individual country via the ‘Change country’ button.

Measuring economic growth by tracking GDP per capita

GDP per capita is a broader measure of real income, and in contrast to survey income, it also takes government expenditures into account. A lot of thinking has gone into the construction of this very prominent metric so that it is comparable not only over time but also across countries. This makes it especially useful as a measure to understand the economic inequality in the world, as we’ve seen above. 18

Another advantage of this measure is that historians have reconstructed estimates of GDP per capita that go back many centuries. This historical research is an extremely laborious task , and researchers have dedicated many years of work to these reconstructions. The ‘Maddison Project’ brings together these long-run reconstructions from various researchers, and thanks to these efforts, we have a good understanding of how incomes have changed over time.

The chart shows how average incomes in different world regions have changed over the last two centuries. Looking at the latest data, you see again the very large inequality between different parts of the world today. You now also see the history of how we got here: small increases in production in some world regions and very large increases in those regions where people have the highest incomes today.

One of the very first countries to achieve sustained economic growth was the United Kingdom. In this chart, we see the reconstructions of GDP per capita in the UK over the last centuries.

It is no accident that the shape of this chart is very similar to the chart on book production at the beginning of this text – very low and almost flat for many generations and then quickly rising. Both of these developments are driven by changes in production.

Average income corresponds to average production, and societies around the world were able to produce very few goods and services in the past. There were no major exceptions to this reality. As we see in this chart, global inequality was much lower than today: the majority of people around the world were very poor.

To get a sense of what this means, you can again take the approach we’ve used to understand the inequality in the world today. When incomes in today’s rich countries were 20 times lower, it was as if all the prices around you today would suddenly increase 20-fold. But in addition to this, you have to consider that all the goods and services that were developed since then disappeared – no bicycle, no internet, no antibiotics. All that’s left for you are the goods and services of the 17th century, but all of them are 20 times more expensive than today. The majority of people around the world, including in today’s richest countries, live in deep poverty.

Just as we’ve seen in the history of book production, this changed once new production technologies were introduced. The printing press was an exceptionally early innovation in production technology; most innovations happened in the last 250 years. The starting point of this rise out of poverty is called the Industrial Revolution.

The printing press made it possible to produce more books. The many innovations that made up the Industrial Revolution made it possible to increase the production of many goods and services. Compare the effort that it takes for a farmer to reap corn with a scythe to the possibilities of a farmer with a tractor or a combined harvester, or think of the technologies that made overland travel faster – from walking on foot to traveling in a horse buggy to taking the train or car; or think of the effort it took to build those roads that the buggies once traveled on with the modern machinery that allows us to produce the corresponding public infrastructure today .

The production of a myriad of different goods and services followed trajectories very similar to the production of books – flat and low in the past and then steeply increasing. The rise in average income that we see in this chart is the result of the aggregation of all these production increases.

In the past, before societies achieved economic growth, the only way for anyone to become richer was for someone else to become poorer; the economy was a zero-sum game. In a society that achieves economic growth, this is no longer the case. When average incomes increase, it becomes possible for people to become richer without someone else becoming poorer.

This transition from a zero-sum to a positive-sum economy is the most important change in economic history (I wrote about it here ) and made it possible for entire societies to leave the extreme poverty of the past behind.

Conclusion: The history of global poverty reduction has just begun

The chart shows the global history of extreme poverty and economic growth.

In the top left panel, you can see how global poverty has declined as incomes increased; in the other eight panels, you see the same for all world regions separately. The starting point of each trajectory shows the data for 1820 and tells us that two centuries ago, the majority of people lived in extreme poverty, no matter where in the world they were at home.

Back then, it was widely believed that widespread poverty was inevitable. But this turned out to be wrong. The trajectories show how incomes and poverty have changed in each world region. All regions achieved growth – the goods and services that people need saw their production and quality increase – and the share living in extreme poverty declined. 19

This historical research was done by Michail Moatsos and is based on the ‘cost of basic needs’-approach as suggested by Robert Allen (2017) and recommended by the late Tony Atkinson. 20 The name ‘extreme poverty’ is appropriate as this measure is based on an extremely low poverty threshold. It takes us back to what I mentioned at the very beginning; this historical research tells us – as the author puts it – that three-quarters of the world "could not afford a tiny space to live, food that would not induce malnutrition, and some minimum heating capacity.”

Since then, all world regions have made progress against extreme poverty – some much earlier than others – but in particular, in Sub-Saharan Africa, the share of people living in deep poverty is still very high.

The last two centuries were the first time in human history that societies have achieved sustained economic growth, and the decline of global poverty is one of the most important achievements in history. But it is still a very long way to go.

This is what we see in this final chart. The red line shows the share of people living in extreme poverty that we just discussed. Additionally, you now also see the share living on less than $3.65, $6.85, and $30 per day. 21

The world today is very unequal, and the majority of the world still lives in poverty: 47% live on less than $6.85 per day, and 84% live on less than $30. Even after two centuries of progress, we are still in the early stages. The history of global poverty reduction has only just begun.

That the world has made substantial progress but nevertheless still has a long way to go is the case for many of the world’s very large problems. I’ve written before that all three statements are true at the same time: The world is much better, the world is awful, and the world can be much better. This is very much the case for global poverty. The world is much less poor than in the past, but it is still very poor, and it remains one of the largest problems we face.

Some writers suggest we can end poverty by simply reducing global inequality. This is not the case. I’m very much in favor of reducing global inequality, and I hope I do what I can to contribute to this. But it is important to be clear that a reduction of inequality alone would still mean that billions around the world would live in very poor conditions. Those who don’t see the importance of growth are not aware of the extent of global poverty. The production of many crucial goods and services has to increase if we want to end it. How much economic growth is needed to achieve this? This is the question I answered in this recent text .

To solve the problems we face, it is not enough to increase overall production. We also need to make good decisions about which goods and services we want to produce more of and which ones we want less of. Growth doesn’t just have a rate, it also has a direction, and the direction we choose matters – for our own happiness and for achieving a sustainable future .

I hope this text was helpful in making clear what economic growth is. It is necessary to remind ourselves of that because we mostly talk about poverty and growth in monetary terms. The monetary measures have the disadvantage that they are abstract, perhaps so abstract that we even forget what growth is actually about and why it is so important. The goods and services that we all need are not just there – they need to be produced – and economic growth means that the quality and quantity of these goods and services increase, from the food that we eat to the public infrastructure we rely on.

The history of economic growth is the history of how societies leave widespread poverty behind by finding ways to produce more of the goods and services that people need – all the very many goods and services that people produce for each other: look around you now.

Acknowledgments: I would like to thank Joe Hasell and Hannah Ritchie for very helpful comments on draft versions of this article.

Our World in Data presents the data and research to make progress against the world’s largest problems. This article draws on data and research discussed in our topic pages on Economic Inequality , Global Poverty , and Economic Growth .

Version history: In October 2023, I copy-edited this article; it was a minor update, and nothing substantial was changed.

Michail Moatsos (2021) – Global extreme poverty: Present and past since 1820. Published in OECD (2021), How Was Life? Volume II: New Perspectives on Well-being and Global Inequality since 1820 , OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/3d96efc5-en .

At the time when material prosperity was so poor, living conditions were extremely poor in general; close to half of all children died .

Historian Gregory Clark reports the estimate that scribes were able to copy about 3,000 words of plain text per day.

See Clark (2007) – A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World. Clark (2007). In it, Clark quotes his earlier working paper with Patricia Levin as the source of these estimates. Gregory Clark and Patricia Levin (2001) – “How Different Was the Industrial Revolution? The Revolution in Printing, 1350–1869.”

There are about 760,000 words in the bible (it differs between various translations and languages; here is an overview of some translations).

This implies that the production of one copy of the Bible meant 253.3 days (8.3 months) of daily work.

Copying the text was not the only step in the production process for which productivity was low. The ink had to be made, parchment had to be produced and cut, and many other steps involved laborious work.

Wikipedia’s article about scribes reports sources that estimate that the production time per bible was even longer than 8 months.

Clark himself states in the same publication that “Prior to that innovation, books had to be copied by hand, with copyists on works with just plain text still only able to copy 3,000 words per day. Producing one copy of the Bible at this rate would take 136 man-days.” Since the product of 136 and 3000 is only 408,000, it is unclear to me how Clark has arrived at this estimate – 408,000 words are fewer words than in the Tanakh and other versions of the bible.

The data is taken from Eltjo Buringh and Jan Luiten Van Zanden (2009) – Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, a Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries. In The Journal of Economic History Vol. 69, No. 2 (June 2009), pp. 409-445. Online here .

Western Europe in this study is the area of today’s Great Britain, Ireland, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and Poland.

On the history and economics of book production, see also the historical work of Jeremiah Dittmar.

I’ve relied on several sources to produce this list. One source was the simple descriptions of the consumption bundles that are relied upon for CPI measurement – like this one from Germany’s statistical office . And I have also relied on the national accounts themselves.

This list is also inspired partly by this list of Gwern and I’m also grateful for the feedback that I got via Twitter to earlier versions of this list. [ Here I shared the list on Twitter ]

This is Hans Rosling’s talk on the magic of the washing machine – worth watching if you haven’t seen it.

Of course all of these transfer payments have a service component to them, someone is managing the payment of the disability benefits etc.

Because smoking causes a large amount of suffering and death I do not find cigarettes valuable, but my opinion is not what matters for a list of goods and services that people produce for each other. Whether some good is considered to be part of the domestic product depends on whether it is a good that some people want, not whether you or I want it. More on this below.

Very similar to the definitions given above is the definition that Kimberly Amadeo gives: “Economic growth is an increase in the production of goods and services over a specific period.”

“Economic growth is an increase in the production of economic goods and services, compared from one period of time to another” is the definition at Investopedia .

Alternatively, to my definition, I think it can be useful to think of economic growth as not directly concerned with the output as such but with the capacity to produce this output. The NASDAQ’s glossary defines growth in that way: “An increase in the nation's capacity to produce goods and services.”

Wikipedia defines economic growth as follows: “Economic growth can be defined as the increase in the inflation-adjusted market value of the goods and services produced by an economy over time.” Definitions that are based on how growth is measured strike me as wrong – just like life expectancy is a measure of population health and hardly the definition of population health. I will get back to this mistake further below in this text.

An aspect that I emphasize more explicitly than others is the quality of the goods and services. People obviously do just care about the number of goods, and in the literature on growth, the measurement of changes in quality is a central question. Many definitions speak more broadly about the ‘value’ of the goods and services that are produced, but I think it is worth emphasizing that growth is also concerned with a rise in the quality of goods and services.

OECD – Measuring the Non-Observed Economy: A Handbook .

The relevant numbers are not small. For the US alone, “illegal drugs add $108 billion to measured nominal GDP in 2017, illegal prostitution adds $10 billion, illegal gambling adds $4 billion, and theft from businesses adds $109 billion” if they were to be included in the US National Accounts. This is according to the report by Rachel Soloveichik (2019) – Including Illegal Activity in the U.S. National Economic Accounts . Published by the BEA.

Ironmonger (2001) – Household Production. In International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences. Pages 6934-6939. https://doi.org/10.1016/B0-08-043076-7/03964-4

Or for some longer run data on the US: Danit Kanal and Joseph Ted Kornegay (2019) – Accounting for Household Production in the National Accounts: An Update, 1965–2017 . In the Survey of Current Business.

Helpful references that discuss how the production boundary is drawn (and how it changed over time) are: Lequiller and Blades – Understanding National Accounts (available in various editions) Diane Coyle (2016) – GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691169859/gdp

The definition of the production boundary by Statistics Finland

Itsuo Sakuma (2013) – The Production Boundary Reconsidered. In The Review of Income and Wealth. Volume 59, Issue 3; Pages 556-567.

Diane Coyle (2017) – Do-it-Yourself Digital: The Production Boundary and the Productivity Puzzle. ESCoE Discussion Paper 2017-01, Available at SSRN: http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2986725

A more general way of thinking about free goods and services is to consider them as those for which the supply is hugely greater than the demand.

Their production, therefore, has an opportunity cost, which means that if someone obtains an economic good, someone is giving up on something for it – this can either be the person themselves or society more broadly. Free goods, in contrast, are provided with zero opportunity cost to society.

It is also the case that the international statistics on these measures often have very low cutoffs for what it means ‘to have access’; this is, for example, the case for what it means to have access to energy.

10 years ago, Google counted there were 129,864,880 different books, and since then, the number has increased further by many thousands of new books every day.

This chart is from Jeremiah Dittmar and Skipper Seabold (2019) – New Media New Knowledge – How the printing press led to a transformation of European thought . I was unfortunately not able to find the raw data anywhere and could not redraw this chart; if someone knows where this (or comparable) data can be found, please let me know.

In the language of economists, the nominal value is measured in terms of money, whereas the real value is measured against goods or services. This means that the real income is the income adjusted for inflation (it is adjusted for the changes in prices of goods and services). Thereby, it allows comparisons that tell us the quantity and quality of the goods and services that people were able to purchase at different points in time.

I learned this way of thinking about it from Twitter user @Kirsten3531, who responded with this idea to a tweet of mine here https://twitter.com/Kirsten3531/status/1389553625308045317

We’ve discussed one such consideration that is crucial for comparability when we consider how to take into account the value of owner-occupied housing.

Whether economic growth translates into the reduction of poverty depends not only on the growth itself but also on how the distribution of income changes. The poverty metrics shown in this chart and in previous charts take both of these aspects – the average level of production/income and its distribution – into account.

Jutta Bolt and Jan Luiten van Zanden (2021) – The GDP data in the chart is taken from The Long View on Economic Growth: New Estimates of GDP, How Was Life? Volume II: New Perspectives on Well-being and Global Inequality since 1820 , OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/3d96efc5-en .

The latest data point for the poverty data refers to 2018, while the latest data point for GDP per capita refers to 2016. In the chart, I have chosen the middle year (2017) as the reference year.

The ‘cost of basic needs’-approach was recommended by the ‘World Bank Commission on Global Poverty’, headed by Tony Atkinson, as a complementary method in measuring poverty.

The report for the ‘World Bank Commission on Global Poverty’ can be found here .

Tony Atkinson – and, after his death, his colleagues – turned this report into a book that was published as Anthony B. Atkinson (2019) – Measuring Poverty Around the World. You find more information on Atkinson’s website .

The CBN-approach Moatsos’ work is based on what was suggested by Allen in Robert Allen (2017) – Absolute poverty: When necessity displaces desire. In American Economic Review, Vol. 107/12, pp. 3690-3721, https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20161080 .

Moatsos describes the methodology as follows: “In this approach, poverty lines are calculated for every year and country separately, rather than using a single global line. The second step is to gather the necessary data to operationalize this approach alongside imputation methods in cases where not all the necessary data are available. The third step is to devise a method for aggregating countries’ poverty estimates on a global scale to account for countries that lack some of the relevant data.” In his publication – linked above – you find much more detail on all of the shown poverty data. The speed at which extreme poverty declined increased over time, as the chart shows. Moatsos writes, “It took 136 years from 1820 for our global poverty rate to fall under 50%, then another 45 years to cut this rate in half again by 2001. In the early 21st century, global poverty reduction accelerated, and in 13 years, our global measure of extreme poverty was halved again by 2014.”

These are the same global poverty estimates – based on household surveys – we discussed above.

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110 Economic Growth Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best economic growth topic ideas & essay examples, 👍 good essay topics on economic growth, ⭐ simple & easy economic growth essay titles.

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• Economic Growth and Crises in Historical Perspective Describing the concepts history, contributors and the how the changes occurred in the economic history In line with the World of Economics, economic thought began with the onset of industrialization.
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Essay on Economic Growth: Top 13 Essays | Economics

Here is a compilation of essays on ‘Economic Growth’ for class 9, 10, 11 and 12. Find paragraphs, long and short essays on ‘Economic Growth’ especially written for school and college students.

Essay on Economic Growth

Essay Contents:

• The New (Endogenous) Economic Growth Theory

Essay # 1. Introduction to Economic Growth:

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Various theories, viewpoints and models have been presented from time to time to account for the sources of economic growth and the determinants of economic development. To most peo­ple, a theory is a contention that is impractical and has no factual support.

For the economist, however, a theory is a systematic explanation of interrelationships among economic variables and its purpose is to explain causal relationships among these variables. Usually a theory is used not only to understand the world better but also to provide a basis for policy. This essay discusses a few of the major theories of economic development, from which emerged alterna­tive approaches to economic development.

The earliest students of development economics were the mercantilists. Mercantilists were a group of traders. They believed that exports were always good for a country because exports implied inflow of precious metals (such as gold and silver). By contrast, imports were harmful for a country because imports implied outflow of precious metals. So, in their view, growth and development of a nation depended on its accumulation of precious metals.

Essay # 2. Adam Smith and Economic Growth :

The mercantilist view was challenged by Adam Smith (1723-1790), the Father of Economics, in 1776. Smith, in his Wealth of Nations, pointed out that the mercantilist view contained a major fallacy. International trade is just like a two-person zero-sum game in which one coun­try’s gains is the other country’s loss. So two trading nations cannot have trade surplus (or favourable balance of trade) at the same time. In the late 18th century Smith argued that the true wealth of a nation is not its accumulated gold and silver hut its labour power— the human factor of production.

And the wealth of nation depended on two main factors:

(i) The productivity of labour, and

(ii) The proportion of productive labour in the total labour force (i.e., the labour force participation rate).

Smith believed that division of labour, specialisation, and exchange were the true springs of economic growth.

Smith argued that in a market-based (competitive) economy, with no collusion, cartel or monopoly, each individual, by acting in his (her) own interest, promoted the public interest. A producer who charges more than others will not find buyers, a worker who asks more than the going wages will not get job, and an employer who pays less than the market wage (i.e., the wages competitors pay) will not find anyone to work.

It was as if an invisible hand were behind the self-interest of capitalists, merchants, landlords and workers, directing their actions toward maximum economic growth. So Smith advocated a laissez-faire (non-interference of govern­ment in economic matters) and free trade policy as two growth-promoting measures.

Essay # 3. The Classical Theory of Economic Stagnation :

The classical theory, based on the work of David Ricardo (1772-1823), had a pessimistic view about the possibility of sustained economic growth. For Ricardo, who assumed little continu­ing technical progress, growth was limited by scarcity of land. A major tenet of Ricardo was the law of diminishing returns.

For him, diminishing returns due to population growth and a fixed supply of land threatened economic growth. Since Ricardo believed that technical change or improved production techniques could only temporarily avert the operation of the law of di­minishing returns, increasing capital was seen as the only way to offset this long-run threat.

However, any fall in the rate of capital accumulation would lead to eventual stagnation. Ricardian stagnation might result in a Marxian scenario, in which wages and investment would be maintained only if property were confiscated by society and payments to private capitalists and landlords stopped.

Essay # 4. Marx’s Theory of Economic Development :

Marx (1818-83) predicted that the capitalist system would in the initial stage grow due to increased profit (surplus value which was the result of exploitation of labour) and would pro­vide funds for accumulation. But since wages were pegged at the subsistence level, due to the existence of a huge reserve army of unemployed, the capitalists would suffer from a realisation crisis. They would not be able to realise the profits embodied in already produced goods. And, according to Marx, the under consumption of the masses is the root cause of all crises.

Marx, in fact, made certain predictions about the growth, maturity and stagnation of capital­ism. He predicted that the capitalist system would ultimately collapse for want of markets and would yield place to socialism.

Unfortunately, history has not obliged Marx. The year 1989 saw the collapse of socialism (especially in erstwhile USSR and its satellite countries) and with it the abandonment of the centralised planning system and the emergence of newborn post-socialist countries.

All these countries have embraced the market system which is now thought to be a more efficient mecha­nism for solving society’s economic problems, promoting faster economic growth and improv­ing the living standards of the people.

Essay # 5. Rostow’s Stages of Economic Grow th:

By criticizing Marx’s stages of growth, viz, feudalism, capitalism and socialism, Walter W. Rostow sets forth a new historical synthesis about the beginnings of modern economic growth on six continents.

His economic stages are:

(i) The traditional society,

(ii) The preconditions for takeoff,

(iii) The takeoff,

(iv) The drive to maturity, and

(v) The age of high mass consumption.

The most important stage is the third one, i.e., the takeoff stage. In order to reach that stage a country must save and invest at least 10 -12% of its national income. Many Western countries had already reached the stage when Rostow’s book appeared. Many underdeveloped countries reached the stage later (mainly under the influence of planning).

Essay # 6. Vicious Circle Theory of Economic Growth :

The vicious circle theory presented by Ragnar Nurkse in his book- The Problems of Capital Formation in Underdeveloped Countries, 1953) indicates that poverty perpetuates itself in mutually reinforcing vicious circles on both the supply and demand sides. In fact, low per capita income is both the cause and the effect of poverty.

A. Supply Side :

At low levels of income, people cannot save much. Shortage of capital leads to low productiv­ity of labour, which perpetuates low levels of income. Thus the circle is complete, as shown in Fig. 1. A country is poor because it was previously so poor that it could not save and invest. Or, as Jeffrey Sachs (2005) explains the poverty trap: ‘Poverty itself is the cause of economic stagnation.’

In short, various obstacles to development are self-enforcing. Low levels of income prevent saving, retard capital growth, hinder productivity growth and keep income low. Successful development may require taking steps to break the chain at various points. By contrast, as countries get richer they save more, creating a virtuous circle in which high sayings rates lead to faster growth. A country is rich because it was rich in the past. Or a rich country is likely to become richer in the future.

B. Demand Side:

In addition, due to the narrow size of the domestic market for light consumer goods (such as shoes, textiles, radio, etc.) there is hardly any incentives for potential entrepreneurs to investment. Lack of invest means low factor productivity and continued low income. A country is poor because it was so poor in the past that it could not provide the market to spur investment.

Essay # 7. Balanced Vs. Unbalanced Economic Growth :

A major debate in the areas of development economics from the 1940s through the 1960s concerned balanced growth versus unbalanced growth. The term balanced growth has been used in different senses. The meaning of the term may vary from the absurd requirement that all sectors grow at the same rate to the more sensible plan that a minimum attention has to be given to all major sectors—industry, agriculture, and services.

Balanced Growth :

The main advocate of the doctrine of balanced growth was Nurkse. To him, balanced growth means the synchronized application of capital to a wide range of different industries. Nurkse considers this strategy as the only escape route from the vicious circle of poverty (under­development).

Big Push Thesis :

The advocates of the Nurkseian doctrine support the big push thesis, arguing that a strategy of gradualism is bound to fail. A substantial effort is needed to overcome the inertia inherent in a stagnant economy. According to Paul N. Rosenstein-Rodan (1943), the factors that contribute to economic growth—such as demand and investment in infrastructure—do not increase smoothly but are subject to sizable jumps or indivisibilities. These indivisibilies result from flows created in the investment market by external economies (positive externalities), that is, cost advantages en­joyed by one firm due to output expansion by another firm.

These benefits spillover to society as a whole, or to some members of it, rather than to the investor concerned. This means that the social profitability of this investment exceeds its private profitability. Furthermore, unless the government intervenes, total private investment will be grossly inadequate compared to soci­ety’s needs.

Indivisibility in Infrastructure :

For Rosenstein-Rodan, a major indivisibility is in infrastructure, such as power, transport and communications. This basic social capital reduces costs to other industries.

Indivisibility in Demand :

The indivisibility arises from the interdependence of investment decisions; that is, a prospec­tive investor is uncertain whether the output from his investment projects will find a market. This problem can be solved if a number of industries are set up so that new producers become each other’s customers and create additional markets through increased incomes. Complemen­tary demand reduces the risk of not finding a market. Reducing interdependent risks increases the incentive to invest.

Hirschman’s Strategy of Unbalanced Growth:

A. O. Hirschman develops (1958) the idea of unbalanced investment to complement existing imbalances. In his view, deliberately unbalancing the economy, in line with a predesigned strategy, is the best path for economic growth. He argues that the big push theory cannot be applied to less developed countries (LDCs) because they do not have the skills needed to launch such a massive effort. The scarcest resource in LDCs is the decision-making input, i.e., entrepreneurship, not capital. Economic development is held in check not by shortage of savings, but by that of risk-takers and decision-makers.

In Hischman’s view, low-income countries need a development strategy that spurs invest­ment decisions. He suggests that since physical resources and managerial skills and abilities are scarce in LDCs, a big push is sensible only in strategically selected industries within the economy. Growth is then likely to spread from one sector to another (similar to Rostow’s concept of leading and lagging sectors).

However, it is not in the Tightness of things to leave investment decisions solely to indi­vidual entrepreneurs in the market. The reason is that the profitability of different investment projects may depend on the order in which they are undertaken. For example, the return from a car factory may be 12%, and that from a steel plant 10%. However, if the car factory is set up first, its return is likely to be low due to shortage of steel.

However, if the steel plant is set up, the returns to the car factory may increase in the next period from 12 to 15%. This means that society would be better off investing in the steel plant first and the car factory next, rather than making independent decisions based on the market. So planners and policy-makers need to consider the interdependence of one investment project with another so that they maximise overall social profitability.

They need to make that investment which promotes the maximum investment. Investment should be concentrated in those industries which have the strongest linkages—both backward (to enterprises that sell inputs to the industry) and forward (to units that buy output from the industry).

The steel industry, for instance, may be accorded the maxi­mum priority by the planners because it has backward linkages with coal and iron ore indus­tries, and forward linkages with car and engineering industries. So there is need for making public investment in steel industry which has a strong investment potential in the sense that it is likely to spur private investment. Similarly, public investment in power and transport will in­crease productivity and thus encourage investment in various other industries.

Critique of Unbalanced Growth :

One main drawback of unbalanced growth approach is that it fails to stress the importance of agricultural investments. According to Hirschman, agriculture does not stimulate linkage for­mation so directly as other industries.

However, empirical studies indicate that agriculture has substantial linkages to other sectors. Moreover, as Johnston and Mellor have pointed out, agri­cultural growth makes vital contributions to the non-agricultural sector through increased food supplies, added foreign exchange, labour supply, capital transfer and wider markets.

The truth is that there is no conflict between these two strategies of development. An opti­mum strategy must combine some elements of balance as well as imbalance. As E. Wayne Nafziger has opined- ‘What constitutes the proper investment balance among sectors requires careful analysis. In some instances, imbalances may be essential for compensating for existing imbalances. By contrast, Hirschman’s unbalanced growth should have some kind of balance as an ultimate aim.’

Essay # 8. Underdevelopment as Coordination Failure :

To some modern economists underdevelopment is result of coordination failure. This is why the theory of big push or critical minimum effort or balanced growth has been put forward. The coordination failure problem leads to multiple equilibria, as has been suggested by M. P. Todaro.

The basic point is that benefits an economic agent receives from taking an action depends positively on how many other agents are expected to take the same action or the extent of these actions. For example, price a farmer can expect to receive for his output depends on the number of intermediaries who are active in channel of distribution which, in turn, depends on number of other farmers who specialise in the same product.

Likewise, fertility decision need in effect to be coordinated across families. All are better if average fertility rate declines. But any one family may be worse off by being only one to have fewer children. The reason is that in rural areas children are a source of labour power for agricultural families. So if only one family adopts the small family norm it will have to hire workers from the external labour market by paying higher wages.

In Fig. 2 the S-shaped privately rational decision function YY first increase at a increasing rate and the at a decreasing rate.

This shape reflects typical nature of complementariness. For example, some economic agents may take complementary action such investing even if others in the economy do not, particu­larly when interactions are expected through foreigners, say, through exporting. If in this case one or a few agents take action, each agent may be isolated from others. So spillovers may be minimum.

Thus the curve YY does not rise quickly at first as more agents take the decision to invest. But after enough invest there may be a cumulative effect, in which most agents begin to provide external benefits to neighbouring agents and the curve rises at a much faster rate. Finally, after most potential investors have been seriously affected and most important gains have been realised the curve starts to rise at a decreasing rate.

In Fig. 2 function YY cuts the 45° line three times. Thus there is possibility of multiple equilibria. Of these D 1 and D 3 are stable equilibria. The reason is that if expectations were slightly changed to a little above or below these-levels economic agents (investors) would adjust their behaviour in such a way as to bring the economy back to equilibrium levels. In each case YY function cuts 45° line from above. This is the hallmark of a stable equilibrium.

The intermediate equilibrium at D 2 cuts YY function from below. So it is unstable. This is because if a few less entrepreneurs were expected to invest equilibrium would be D 1 and if a few more, equilibrium would shift to D 3 .

Therefore, D 2 may be treated as chance equilibrium, i.e., it could be an equilibrium only by chance. Thus in practice we can think of an unstable equilibrium such as a D 2 as ways of dividing ranges of expectations over which a higher or lower stable equilibrium will hold sway.

Thus there is need for coordinating investment decisions when the value (rate of relation) of one investment depends on the presence or the extent of other investments. All are better off with more investors or higher rate of investment.

But this cannot be achieved only through market system. So there is need for government intervention. It is possible to achieve the de­sired outcome only under the influence of certain types of government policies. Difficulties of investment coordination give rise to government-led strategies for industrialisation.

Technology Spillover :

The investment coordination perspective explains the nature and extent of problems posed when technology has spread effects, i.e., development of technology by one firm has favour­able effects on other firms, i.e., positive externality.

Now suppose we show average rate of investment expected of other key firms or in the economy as a whole on the horizontal axis or profitable rate of investment for a particular firm on the vertical axis, given what other firms are expected to invest on average. In this case points where the YY the curve crosses 45° line in Fig. 2 depict equilibrium investment rates.

Then due to direct relation between investment and growth, the economy may get struck in a low growth rate largely because its expected rate of investment is likely to be low. Changing expectations may not be sufficient if it is more profitable for a firm to wait for others to invest rather than to take the lead and become a ‘pioneer’ investor. In that case there is need for government policy in addition to a change of expectation of investors.

This is why attention to the presence of multiple equilibria is so important. Market forces can bring us to one of these equilibria but they are not sufficient to ensure that no equilibrium will be achieved and they offer no mechanism to move from a bad equilibrium to a good one.

In general when jointly profitable investment may not be made without coordination multi­ple equilibria may exist in which the same individuals with access to same resources and tech­nologies could find themselves in either a good or bad situation. For example, the extent of effort of each firm in a developing region puts to increase the rate of technological transfer depends on effort put by other firms.

No doubt bring in modern technology from abroad often has spillover effects for other firms. But the presence of multiple equilibria subject to making better technology available is a necessary but not a sufficient condition to achieve faster economic growth and consequent improvement in the living standards of the people.

Essay # 9. The Lewis Model of Economic Growth :

In the Lewis model, economic growth occurs due to an increase in the size of the industrial sector, which accumulates capital, relative to the subsistence agricultural sector, which does not accumulate any capital. The source of capital in the industrial sector is profits from the low wages paid in unlimited supply of surplus labour from traditional agriculture. An unlimited supply of labour available to the industrial sector facilitates capital accumulation and economic growth.

Urban industrialists increase their labour supply by attracting workers from agriculture who migrate to urban areas when wages there exceed rural wages. Lewis elaborates this point while explaining labour transfer from agricultural to industry in a newly industrializing country. Industrial expansion would come to a halt when labour shortages develop in rural areas.

The significance of the Lewis model is that growth takes place as a result of structural change. An economy consisting mainly of a subsistence agricultural sector (which does not save) is transformed into one predominantly in the modern capitalist sector (which alone saves). As the relative size of the capitalist sector grows, the ratio of profits and other surplus to na­tional income grows.

Essay # 10. The Fei-Ranis Modification of Lewis Model of Economic Growth :

In John Fei and Gustav Ranis, in their modification of the Lewis model, contend that the agri­cultural sector must grow, through technical progress, for output to grow as fast as population; technical change increases output per hectare to compensate for the growing pressure of labour on land, which is a fixed resource. As with the Lewis model, the advent of fully commercialized agriculture and industry ends industrial growth (or what Fei-Ranis calls the take-off into self-sustained growth).

Essay # 11. Baran’s Neo-Marxist Thesis :

Paul A. Baran incorporated Lenin’s concepts of imperialism and international class conflict into his theory of economic growth and stagnation. For Baran LDCs were unlikely to achieve growth and development because of Western economic and political domination, especially in the colonial period.

Capitalism arose not through the growth of small competitive firms at home but through the transfer from abroad of advanced monopolistic business. Baran felt that as capitalism took hold, the bourgeoisie (business and middle classes) in LDCs, lacking the strength to spearhead thorough institutional change for major capital accumulation, would have to seek allies among other classes.

From Marxian perspective Baran writes:

What is decisive is that economic development in underdeveloped countries is profoundly inimical to the dominant interests in the advanced capitalist countries. The backward world has always represented the indispensable hinterland of the highly developed capitalist West.

The only way out of the impasse may be worker and peasant revolution, expropriating land and capital, and establishing a new regime based on collective effort and the creed of the pre­dominance of interests of society over the interests of a selected few.

Essay # 12. Dependency Theory of Economic Growth :

According to A. G. Frank, a major dependency theorist, underdevelopment is not simply non-development, but is a unique type of socioeconomic structure that results from the depend­ency of the underdeveloped country on advanced capitalist countries.

This results from foreign capital removing a surplus from the dependent economy to the advanced country by structur­ing the underdeveloped economy in an ‘external orientation’ that includes the export of pri­mary products, the import of manufactures, and dependent industrialisation. As Frank states- ‘It is capitalism, world and national, which produced under development in the past and still generates underdevelopment in the present.’

Frank’s dependency approach maintains that countries become underdeveloped through integration into, not isolation from, the international capitalist system. However, despite some evidence supporting Frank, he does not give adequately demonstration that withdrawing from the capitalist system results in faster economic development.

Unequal Exchange :

According to dependency theorists, the same process of capitalism that brought development to the presently advanced capitalists countries resulted in the underdevelopment of the depend­ent periphery. The global system is such that the development of part of the system occurs at the expense of other parts. Underdevelopment of the periphery is the Siamese twin of develop­ment of the centre.

Centre-periphery trade is characterised by unequal exchange. This may refer to deteriora­tion in the peripheral country’s terms of trade. It may also refer to unequal bargaining power in investment, transfer of technology, taxation, and relations with multinational corporations. According to S. Amin, unequal exchange means the exchange of products whose production involves wage differentials greater than those of productivity.

The Neoclassical Counterrevolution :

The neoclassical counterrevolution to Marxian and dependency theory emphasised reliance on the market, private initiative, and deregulation in LDCs. Neoclassical growth theory empha­sised the importance of increased saving and capital formation for economic development and for empirical measures of sources of growth. The neoclassical model predicts that incomes per capita between rich and poor countries will converge. But empirical studies do not support this prediction.

This is why N. G. Mankiw and others propose an augmented Solow neoclassical model which includes human capital as an additional explanatory variable to physical capital and labour. The Washington institutions of the World Bank, IMF, and US Government have applied neoclassical analysis in their policy-based lending to LDCs.

Essay # 13. The New (Endogenous) Economic Growth Theory :

The new (endogenous) growth theory developed by Paul Romer arose from concerns that neo­classical economists neglected the explanations of technical change and accepted the unrealis­tic assumption of perfect competition. For Mankiw, Romer, and Weil, human capital and for Romer, endogenous (originating internally) technology, when added to physical capital and labour in neoclassical growth theory, are important factors contributing to economic growth.

One reason is that although there are diminishing returns to physical capital, there are constant returns to all (human and physical) capital. The new growth theory, however, does no better than an enhanced neoclassical model in measuring the sources of economic growth.

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What Is Economic Growth?

Understanding economic growth, phases of economic growth, how to measure economic growth, how to generate economic growth.

• Frequently Asked Questions

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• Macroeconomics

What Is Economic Growth and How Is It Measured?

Katrina Ávila Munichiello is an experienced editor, writer, fact-checker, and proofreader with more than fourteen years of experience working with print and online publications.

Economic growth is an increase in the production of economic goods and services in one period of time compared with a previous period. It can be measured in nominal or real (adjusted to remove inflation ) terms. Traditionally, aggregate economic growth is measured in terms of gross national product (GNP)  or gross domestic product (GDP) , although alternative metrics are sometimes used.

Key Takeaways

• Economic growth is an increase in the production of goods and services in an economy.
• Increases in capital goods, labor force, technology, and human capital can all contribute to economic growth.
• Economic growth is commonly measured in terms of the increase in aggregated market value of additional goods and services produced, using estimates such as GDP.
• The four phases of economic growth are expansion, peak, contraction, and trough.
• Tax cuts are generally less effective in spurring economic growth than are increases in government spending.
• If the rewards of economic growth go only to an elite group, then it is unlikely that the growth will be sustainable.

Investopedia / Jiaqi Zhou

In simplest terms, economic growth refers to an increase in aggregate production in an economy , which is generally manifested in a rise in national income. Often, but not necessarily, aggregate gains in production correlate with increased average marginal productivity . That leads to an increase in incomes , inspiring consumers to open up their wallets and buy more, which means a higher material quality of life and standard of living .

In economics, growth is commonly modeled as a function of physical capital , human capital, labor force, and technology. Simply put, increasing the quantity or quality of the working age population, the tools that they have to work with, and the recipes that they have available to combine labor , capital , and raw materials , will lead to increased economic output .

Image by Sabrina Jiang © Investopedia 2020

The economy moves through different periods of activity. This movement is called the “ business cycle .” It consists of four phases:

• Expansion – During this phase employment, income, industrial production, and sales all increase, and there is a rising real GDP.
• Peak – This is when an economic expansion hits its ceiling. It is in effect a turning point.
• Contraction – During this phase the elements of an expansion all begin to decrease. It becomes a recession when a significant decline in economic activity spreads across the economy.
• Trough – This is when an economic contraction hits its nadir.

A single business cycle is dated from peak to peak or trough to trough. Such cycles generally are not regular in length, and there can be a period of contraction during an expansion and vice versa.

Since World War II, the U.S. economy has experienced more expansions than contractions. Between 1945 and 2019, the average expansion lasted about 65 months, while the average contraction was only 11 months. However, the Great Recession, from December 2007 to June 2009, went on for 18 months. This was followed by the longest expansion on record, 128 months, lasting until 2020 and the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Governments often try to stimulate economic growth by lowering interest rates, which makes money cheaper to borrow. However, that can only last for so long. Eventually, as happened in 2022, rates need to be hiked to combat price inflation and keep the economy from boiling over.

The most common measure of economic growth is the real GDP. This is the total value of everything, both goods and services, produced in an economy, with that value adjusted to remove the effects of inflation. There are three different methods for looking at real GDP.

• Quarterly growth at an annual rate – This looks at the change in the GDP from quarter to quarter, which is then compounded into an annual rate. For example, if one quarter’s change is 0.3%, then the annual rate would be extrapolated to be 1.2%.
• Four-quarter or year-over-year growth rate – This compares a single quarter’s GDP from two successive years as a percentage. It is often used by businesses to offset the effects of seasonal variations.
• Annual average growth rate – This is the average of changes in each of the four quarters. For example, if in 2022 there were four-quarter rates of 2%, 3%, 1.5%, and 1%, the annual average growth rate for the year would be 7.5% ÷ 4 = 1.875%.

GDP, the most popular way to measure economic growth, is calculated by adding up all of the money spent by consumers, businesses, and the government in a given period. The formula is: GDP = consumer spending + business investment + government spending + net exports .

Of course, measuring the value of a commodity is tricky. Some goods and services are considered to be worth more than others. For example, a smartphone is more valuable than a pair of socks. Growth has to be measured in the value of goods and services, not just the quantity.

Another problem is that not all individuals place the same value on the same goods and services. A heater is more valuable to a resident of Alaska, while an air conditioner is more valuable to a resident of Florida. Some people value steak more than fish and vice versa. Because value is subjective, measuring for all individuals is very tricky.

The common approximation is to use the current market value. In the United States, this is measured in terms of U.S. dollars and added all together to produce aggregate measures of output including GDP.

There are alternatives to GDP . For example, the World Bank uses gross national income per capita, which includes income sent back by citizens working overseas, to measure economic growth, classify countries for analytical purposes, and determine borrowing eligibility.

Economic growth is dependent on the following four contributory areas:

Increase Physical Capital Goods

The first is an increase in the amount of physical capital goods in the economy. Adding capital to the economy tends to increase productivity of labor. Newer, better, and more tools mean that workers can produce more output per time period. For a simple example, a fisherman with a net will catch more fish per hour than a fisherman with a pointy stick. However two things are critical to this process.

Someone in the economy must first engage in some form of saving (sacrificing their current consumption) in order to free up the resources to create the new capital. In addition, the new capital must be the right type, in the right place, and at the right time for workers to actually use it productively.

Improve Technology

A second method of producing economic growth is technological improvement. An example of this is the invention of gasoline fuel; prior to the discovery of the energy-generating power of gasoline, the economic value of petroleum was relatively low. The use of gasoline became a better and more productive method of transporting goods in process and distributing final goods more efficiently.

Improved technology allows workers to produce more output with the same stock of capital goods by combining them in novel ways that are more productive. Like capital growth, the rate of technical growth is highly dependent on the rate of savings and investment, as they are necessary to engage in research and development (R&D).

The four factors of production are land and natural resources, labor, capital equipment, and entrepreneurship .

Grow the Labor Force

Another way to generate economic growth is to grow the labor force. All else being equal, more workers generate more economic goods and services. During the 19th century, a portion of the robust U.S. economic growth was due to a high influx of cheap, productive immigrant labor. However, as with capital-driven growth, there are some key conditions to this process.

Increasing the labor force necessarily increases the amount of output that must be consumed in order to provide for the basic subsistence of the new workers, so the new workers need to be at least productive enough to offset this and not be net consumers. Also, just like additions to capital, it is important for the right type of workers to flow to the right jobs in the right places in combination with the right types of complementary capital goods in order to realize their productive potential.

Increase Human Capital

The last method is to increase human capital . This means laborers become more accomplished at their crafts, raising their productivity through skills training, trial and error, or simply more practice. Savings, investment, and specialization are the most consistent and easily controlled methods.

Human capital in this context can also refer to social and institutional capital. Behavioral tendencies toward higher social trust and reciprocity, along with political or economic innovations such as improved protections for property rights, are types of human capital that can increase the productivity of the economy.

Why Does Economic Growth Matter?

In the simplest terms, economic growth means that more will be available to more people, which is why governments try to generate it . However, it’s not just about money, goods, and services. Politics also enter into the equation . How economic growth is used to fuel social progress matters.

According to 10 years of research conducted by the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research, “most countries that have shown success in reducing poverty and increasing access to public goods have based that progress on strong economic growth.” If the benefits flow only to an elite group, the growth will not be sustained.

How Do Taxes Affect Economic Growth?

Taxes affect economic growth, at least in the short term, through their impact on demand. A tax cut increases demand by raising personal disposable income and encouraging businesses to hire and invest. However, the size of the effect is dependent on the strength of the economy. If it is operating close to capacity, the effect is likely to be small. If it is operating significantly below its potential, the impact will be more pronounced. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the effect is three times larger in the latter case than in the former.

The CBO also found that tax cuts are generally not as effective in stimulating economic growth as government spending increases. That is because most of the spending boosts demand, while tax cuts boost savings as well as demand. One way to mitigate this effect is to target tax cuts to lower- and middle-income households, which are less likely to put the money into savings.

What Is Another Word or Term for Economic Growth?

Other words and terms for economic growth include “boom,” “prosperity,” “economic development,” “economic upswing,” “economic upsurge,” “industrial development,” and “buoyancy of the economy.”

Economic growth occurs when there is a rise in the production of goods and services for a certain period as compared with a previous one. It is generally measured in terms of GDP and is an indicator of the economic health of a country . However, how widely the fruits of the growth are shared is an important factor in its sustenance, not to mention societal health and progress.

Oxford University Press. " Overview: Economic Growth ."

Khan Academy. " Lesson Summary: Economic Growth ."

Congressional Research Service. " Introduction to U.S. Economy: The Business Cycle and Growth ."

CNBC. " Federal Reserve Approves First Interest Rate Hike in More Than Six Years ."

Bank of Canada. " Measuring Economic Growth ."

The World Bank. " Why Can't I Find Estimates of Gross National Product (GNP)? "

U.S. Library of Congress. " U.S. History Primary Source Timeline ."

United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research. " Why Should I Care About Economic Growth? "

Urban Institute & Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center. " How Do Taxes Affect the Economy in the Short Run? "

Power Thesaurus. " Economic Growth ."

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What Drives Long-Run Economic Growth?

There are three main factors that drive economic growth:

• Accumulation of capital stock
• Increases in labor inputs, such as workers or hours worked
• Technological advancement

Growth accounting measures the contribution of each of these three factors to the economy. Thus, a country’s growth can be broken down by accounting for what percentage of economic growth comes from capital, labor and technology.

It has been shown, both theoretically and empirically, that technological progress is the main driver of long-run growth. The explanation is actually quite straightforward. Holding other input factors constant, the additional output obtained when adding one extra unit input of capital or labor will eventually decline, according to the law of diminishing returns. As a result, a country cannot maintain its long-run growth by simply accumulating more capital or labor. Therefore, the driver of long-run growth has to be technological progress.

This post further investigates the relationship between sources of past economic growth and future performances, especially the periods after the Great Recession, among developed countries. We collected data from the Conference Board’s Total Economy Database for nine major advanced economies 1 from 1990 to 2013 and performed the following growth accounting exercise:

For each country, per capita output growth is first broken down into the respective contributions from capital stock, labor inputs and technological advancements (represented by total factor productivity, or TFP). 2 Next, we divide our sample into two periods: before and after the financial crisis. This allows us to check if drivers of growth relate to the economic performance of a country, especially during or after the recession. Finally, we plot average gross domestic product (GDP) growth after the financial crisis against the average contribution to output growth of labor, capital and TFP before 2007, as shown in the figures below.

The result shows a positive correlation between past TFP and future growth among developed economies. The correlation coefficient was close to 0.60. Namely, those countries whose growth was driven by TFP before the crisis tended to have higher output growth afterward. However, the relationships between GDP growth after the crisis and the contribution to GDP from capital or labor were both negative. The correlation between output growth and labor was -0.68 and between output growth and capital was -0.30.  The negative correlations suggest that countries with growth driven by capital or labor accumulation are less likely to do well in the future, especially during economic downturns. Our simple exercise also implies that the health of an economy depends on the source of growth instead of the growth itself.   

In addition to the role TFP plays in driving long-run growth, this simple exercise shows that a country with robust TFP-driven growth prior to the Great Recession tended to do well relative to other countries following the recession.

Notes and References

1 The countries are Germany, Italy, France, the United States, Japan, Australia, Canada, Great Britain and Spain.

2 The labor inputs are measured by the total labor hours adjusted by quality of labor (human capital).

Additional Resources

• On the Economy : How to Measure the Black Market
• On the Economy : The Effects of Contract Enforcement and Corruption on Trade
• On the Economy : Why Has International Trade Increased So Much?

YiLi Chien is an economist and economic policy advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. His areas of research include macroeconomics, household finance and asset pricing. He joined the St. Louis Fed in 2012. Read more about the author and his research .

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This blog offers commentary, analysis and data from our economists and experts. Views expressed are not necessarily those of the St. Louis Fed or Federal Reserve System.

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Economic Growth, Essay Example

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• Causes of Economic Growth

The topic of economic growth, and how to drive economic growth, is an important one for policy makers and businessmen alike. Indeed, especially after the 2007-2008 financial crisis in which many previously healthy economies fell into recession, economic growth has emerged as one of the most concepts in the current policy climate.

Traditionally, the factors of economic growth are embodied in the GDP equation: AD=C+I+G+X-M (Mankiw, 2008). John Maynard Keynes, a famous economist, was really the first to develop this equation for factors that drive economic growth. In this conceptualization, aggregate demand is the product of five different factors: consumption, investment, government spending, exports and imports (Mankiw, 2006).

Consumption is the first factor or cause of economic growth. Consumption in this context is limited to personal consumption; that is, consumption among private individuals for purchases of goods and services. Consumption can also be divided into different types of goods such as durable goods, nondurable goods, and commodities (Mankiw, 2006). Durable goods are large-ticket items such as cars, computers, and the purchase of appliances. Nondurable goods are typically goods such as food and clothing that have a limited consumption time; non-durable goods also includes trip to restaurants and other establishments such as those typically found in the mall. Finally, commodities are also included under the category of consumption. Commodities include the purchase of metals such as gold and silver.

Overall, consumption plays a key role in driving economic growth for more developed economies. For example, consumption traditionally composes 60-70% of gross domestic product in the United States; consumption also plays a substantive role in the economic growth of Europe. The reason consumption plays a greater role in driving growth in developed economies is, for the most part, they have higher per-capita income levels that translate into greater disposable income. At the same time, these economies also tend to be free-market economies where the offering of credit to consumers is an important way to promote economic growth.

The second main element of economic growth is investment. Individuals or corporations can engage in investment. Businesses typically make investments in capital equipment such as computers, machinery, buildings, or other goods related to the production of goods and services. Investment, however, is not limited to large businesses. Small-to-medium sized businesses may also engage in investment in such items as cars, trucks, or equipment used for accounting and investing.

Regardless the size or stage of economic growth, investment tends to play a major role in economic growth. This is especially true in the case of China. Since 1979, the Chinese economy has registered double-digit growth levels. Investment has played a key role in driving this growth. Indeed, the level of investment in China has varied between 50-65% of the country’s total GDP. This was because firms did not have any where to put their money, and decided to (over) invest in capacity such as building new houses, new factories, or investing in factory equipment to increase production. Regardless of the size and stage of economy, investment plays a key role in driving economic growth. This is especially because corporate investment is linked to other variables in the growth equation such as hiring, consumption, and exports.

The third major factor of growth is government spending. Government spending includes government purchase of goods and services that are used for government or public purposes. For example, the government may spend money to construct roads for driving, may build schools and employ teachers from tax dollars, and may purchase missile protection systems to protect people from foreign attack. Keynes posited that government expenditure could be a particularly powerful source of economic growth, particularly during times when the private sector did not spend on investment, thus also denting possible consumption expenditures (Mankiw, 2008). This was purported to be the case in the United States and other countries after the 2007-2008 financial crisis. Numerous countries introduced “stimulus” packages that pledged government expenditures in key areas such as infrastructure, education, and health in order to promote economic growth after it cratered. Although there is mixed evidence regarding the efficacy of government expenditure to drive economic growth (known in the literature as the “multiple”), many governments used it to effect.

The fourth and fifth growth drivers are related: imports and exports. Imports are goods and services that are purchased from abroad. Imports are the only growth category that is subtracted in the GDP identity. That is, the total amount a nation imports from abroad is subtracted from growth because this represents expenditures on goods and services purchased from foreign economies. Exports are an important driver of economic growth. Exports represent goods and services that are purchased by foreign individuals abroad. Exports have a positive contribution to economic growth. Indeed, exports played a key role in the development of many Asian economies in the 1970s and 1980s. Known collectively as the Asian “Tigers”, countries such as Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, and China developed their economies through producing lower-priced goods and selling them abroad. The problem with using exports as a main growth strategy is two-fold: 1) as a country’s economy develops, wages and other production costs naturally rise meaning that exports become more and more expensive; 2) being competitive with exports usually mean having a cheaper currency that can lead to political problems.

• Per-capita growth and living standards

Gross domestic product (GDP), whether in the aggregate or on a per-capita basis, is a statistic under rhetorical fire. Indeed, the measure is a good approximation of the value of goods and services produced in a country over a defined period of time. The measure, however, is an incomplete measure of how individuals fare in the economy whether that be as a function of living standards or their general satisfaction. In defense of GDP, it makes no claim to inform the latter issues; GDP is primarily used by governments across the world because it is easier to calculate than other more inclusive statistics (IMF, 2011). At the same time, however, it does tend to privilege economic growth as the most important economic metric. This essay will argue, based on the data provided for four countries, that per-capita GDP is not necessarily a good proxy to measure living standards in a country (Nielsen, 2011).

First, a quick methodological word on how per-capita GDP is calculated. Per-capita GDP is essentially a disaggregated measure of total GDP on an individual basis (World Bank, 2012). That is, in order to calculate the per-capita GDP for any country one takes the aggregate level of GDP output in goods and services and divides it by the total population size (IMF,2011). Thus, per-capita GDP does not fundamentally represent what each person in the economy “earns” but rather each person’s share in a country’s economic output (IMF,2011). This is an important distinction, particularly when trying to assess whether per-capita GDP is a good proxy for living standards in a country.

Looking at the data one can see how distortions in the calculation method may lead to a somewhat misleading impression of an individual’s standard of living in a country. Qatar is the country with the highest per-capital level of all four countries. There are two different measures for each country: The United Nations per-capita statistic, which essentially measures per-capita GDP in local currency meaning that countries with a weaker currency will register a lower per-capita GDP; the IMF measure which essentially measures per-capita from the same base currency meaning that it strips out differences in per-capita GDP due to currency fluctuations (Nielsen, 2011). The UN ranks Qatar fourth based on per-capita GDP; the IMF ranks Qatar first based on per-capita GDP- the difference between the two means that Qatar’s currency was likely weaker versus other currencies. Despite Qatar’s high ranking on a per-capita basis, the country has a lower human development ranking: 37 th . The dissonance between these statistics is a function of what they are measuring. Qatar is a rich country due to rich natural gas deposits located in the country (EIU Qatar, 2011). At the same time, the country has a relatively small population (roughly average for other Gulf nations) that means a high per-capita GDP level built off the country’s large aggregate GDP. The Human Development Index, on the other hand, is a broad-based index that measures individuals’ access to education, health, and other social resources (UN,2011). Thus, the measure does not focus on the size of the economy, but rather the resources individuals can take advantage of in the country. The dissonance of Qatar’s three measures could have the following interpretation: Although Qatar is certainly a “rich” country in the aggregate, individuals do not have similar access to resources in the health, educational, and social sphere, or the ability to develop at the same rate. This difference gets a the operationalization of “standard of living” because such a measure does not simply measure a country’s economic output, but the goods and services that an individual enjoys, including public goods that make up a substantive proportion of .

Equatorial Guinea would provide a similar example. Equatorial Guinea is a country blessed with abundant oil resources. The country discovered significant oil reserves off the western coast of the country leading to significant economic growth after the discovery. The country shares a similar profile to Qatar: A country with a relatively small population (total population in the country is around 700,000) and abundant natural resources that registers a high per-capita GDP, although the two measures (UN and IMF) have greater distance (EIU Equatorial Guinea, 2012). The true economic level of the country is blunted by the cross-sectional nature of the data presented; looking at time-series data would show how economic growth has skyrocketed in Guinea. However, similar to the case of Guinea, the country ranks substantially lower in the Human Development Index: 136 th . This significant dissonance might signify two things. First, the relative newness of the country’s riches where economic growth has led to a substantial boost, while government expenditures on public goods and other services have lagged behind (EIU Equatorial Guinea, 2012). Second, and somewhat related, the country likely suffers from the “Dutch Disease” where oil revenue essentially crowds out investment in other areas. In any sense, one could rightly say that Equatorial Guinea has economic development, but a low standard of living, particularly for those individuals

Finally, we have the two countries of the United Kingdom and South Korea. Of all the countries profiled in this exercise, the United Kingdom likely has the highest aggregate level of economic output. At the same time, however, the country also boasts a larger population (roughly 62 million in 2011). Thus, the ranking of 27 th and 24 th , respectively, demonstrate a mature economy with a substantial population- something not seen in the economic upstarts of Qatar and Equatorial Guinea (EIU UK, 2012). The UK, however, is the only country that boasts a Human Development Index roughly equal to the per-capita level. Overall, the UN ranks the country 28 th , marginally on par with the rankings of the per-capital level. Although there is no rule that a country should rank similarly across the three categories, it may show a greater balance in how resources are distributed. That is, the government stepping in to actually provide infrastructure, health, and educational services roughly on par with the level of economic development.

South Korea is the last country examined, and the main anomaly. South Korea arguably registered the fastest rate of economic development in history during the 1960s and 1970s. However, since the “miracle on the Han (river)” during that time, the country’s economic growth rate has slowed down, entering a more mature phase of economic development (EIU South Korea, 2012). Overall, the country ranks 36 th and 27 th , respectively, for per-capita economic level; this level is below Qatar and the UK, while higher than the average of Guinea’s two per-capita measures. Unlike the other three countries, however, South Korea boasts a higher UN Human Development Index than its per-capita GDP scores. Since South Korea has a similar ranking to countries such as Canada and Japan, it might be interesting to take a look on which factors the country is ranked higher. The country’s strength in the rankings is predicated on four factors: 1) longevity (a function of the country’s single-payer health care system); 2) education level (a high mandatory education level); 3) high cellular phone penetration rate; 4) lower level of income equality than the other four countries (UN, 2012). Together, these factors lifted South Korea into a category of countries typically reserved for advanced economies.

Overall, the data show limited correlation between per-capita income level and the human development index. This is not to say that the two are not related: high standards of living, particularly those found in northern European countries, are predicated on strong economies. However, a high level of economic , whether it be aggregate or per-capita, is not a sufficient condition to ensure a high standard of living. Indeed, the government and private enterprise must work together to provide goods and services that improves an individual’s ability to live and succeed in society. This is particularly true in the age of increasing income inequality of countries. A simple improvement in economic growth will not translate to a better standard of living if the largesse from such growth is limited to only certain individuals in the economy. Countries should also be concerned about rapid increases in per-capita growth that does not translate into an increase in living standards for the population at large.

Works Cited:

Economist Intelligence Unit. (2012). Equatorial Guinea. Available at: www.eiu.com

Economist Intelligence Unit. (2012). Qatar. Available at: www.eiu.com

Economist Intelligence Unit. (2012). South Korea. Available at: www.eiu.com

Economist Intelligence Unit. (2012). United Kingdom. Available at: www.eiu.com

International Monetary Fund (2011). Explanation of per-capita growth calculation methods.

Mankiw, G. (2008) Economics. Cengage: Boston.

Mankw, G. (2006). Macroeconomics. Cengage: Boston.

Nielsen, L. (2011). Classification of Countries Based on Their Level of Development: How It is Done and How it Could Be Done. IMF Working Paper. Available at: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2011/wp1131.pdf.

World Bank. Measurement of living standards and equality. Available at: http://siteresources.worldbank.org/ECAEXT/Resources/publications/Making-Transition-Work-for-Everyone/appendix+A.pdf.

United Nations. Human Development Index Explanation. Available at: http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2011/.

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Essay on India’s Economic Growth

• 1 Introduction
• 2 Historical Overview of India’s Economic Growth
• 3.1 1) Agriculture sector:
• 3.2 2) Manufacturing sector
• 3.3 3) Service sector
• 3.4 4) Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)
• 4.1 1) Poverty and income inequality:
• 4.2 2) Infrastructure gaps:
• 4.3 3) Political instability:
• 4.4 4) Lack of skilled labor force:
• 5.1 1) Reforms in agriculture, manufacturing, and service sectors:
• 5.2 2) Policies to attract foreign investment:
• 5.3 3) Programs for skill development and employment generation
• 5.4 4) Investment in infrastructure development
• 6 Conclusion
• 7.1 What has been the growth rate of India’s economy in recent years?
• 7.2 What are the major drivers of India’s economic growth?
• 7.3 What are the major challenges facing India’s economic growth?
• 7.4 What initiatives has the government taken to promote economic growth in India?
• 7.5 What is the Skill India program?
• 7.6 What is the Make in India program?
• 7.7 What is the Pradhan Mantri Rojgar Protsahan Yojana?
• 7.8 What is the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund?
• 7.9 What is the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana?
• 7.10 What is the future outlook for India’s economic growth?

Explore India’s economic growth in detail through this insightful essay. Understand the factors driving India’s economic progress and the challenges it faces. Read about the country’s economic policies and their impact on businesses and citizens.

Introduction

Economic growth is a crucial aspect of any developing country and plays a major role in improving the standard of living of its citizens. In India, economic growth has been a major focus of policy makers since independence, and has been the driving force behind the country’s progress over the past few decades. This essay will outline the historical overview of India’s economic growth, the key contributors to its economic growth, the challenges it faces, and the government policies aimed at promoting economic growth.

Historical Overview of India’s Economic Growth

The pre-independence era of India was characterized by a stagnant economy, with low levels of investment, poor infrastructure, and limited industrialization. After independence, India adopted a mixed economy model, with the government controlling key industries such as coal, steel, and heavy industries. This model was not very successful, and the economy remained slow-growing until the 1980s, when India adopted reforms aimed at liberalizing the economy and promoting private sector investment.

In 1991, India underwent a major economic reform process, known as the liberalization, privatization, and globalization (LPG) reforms. These reforms aimed to promote entrepreneurship and investment, and to reduce the role of the government in the economy. The reforms led to the growth of the private sector, and the emergence of many new industries. As a result, the economy experienced a period of rapid growth, and India emerged as one of the fastest-growing economies in the world.

Key Contributors to India’s Economic Growth

India’s economic growth has been driven by several key contributors including the growth of the agriculture, manufacturing, and service sectors. The government has also played a major role in promoting economic growth through various initiatives, such as the Make in India program, the Skill India program, and the Pradhan Mantri Rojgar Protsahan Yojana.

1) Agriculture sector:

Agriculture is the backbone of India’s economy, as it employs around 50% of the country’s workforce. The agricultural sector has undergone significant reforms over the past few decades, which have led to an increase in productivity, and the growth of the agribusiness sector. The government has also implemented various programs aimed at promoting the development of the agricultural sector, such as the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, which provides insurance to farmers against crop losses.

2) Manufacturing sector

The manufacturing sector has been a key contributor to India’s economic growth, and has been growing at a rapid pace since the 1990s. The government has implemented various policies aimed at promoting the growth of the manufacturing sector, such as the Make in India program, which aims to make India a hub for global manufacturing. The growth of the manufacturing sector has also led to the development of the small and medium enterprises (SME) sector, which has become a major source of employment in the country.

3) Service sector

The service sector is one of the largest contributors to India’s GDP, and is growing at a rapid pace. The sector includes a wide range of industries, such as financial services, information technology (IT), tourism, and retail. The growth of the service sector has been driven by the liberalization of the economy, and the growth of the IT industry, which has become a major contributor to India’s economy.

4) Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)

FDI has been a major contributor to India’s economic growth, as it has led to the growth of various industries and the development of the infrastructure sector. The government has implemented various policies aimed at attracting FDI, such as the 100% FDI policy in various sectors, which allows foreign companies to invest in India without any restrictions.

Challenges Facing India’s Economic Growth

Despite the impressive growth of India’s economy, there are several challenges that are hindering further progress. Some of these challenges include:

1) Poverty and income inequality:

Despite the rapid growth of the economy, poverty and income inequality remain major challenges in India. A large proportion of the population still lives below the poverty line, and the income gap between the rich and poor is widening. The government has implemented various programs aimed at reducing poverty, such as the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, which provides financial inclusion to the poor by providing them with access to bank accounts and other financial services.

2) Infrastructure gaps:

Another major challenge facing India’s economic growth is the inadequate infrastructure. The country still lacks basic facilities, such as electricity, water, and roads, in many regions, which hinders economic growth. The government is working to address this issue through various initiatives, such as the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, which aims to provide rural areas with all-weather roads, and the Atal Bhujal Yojana, which aims to improve groundwater management.

3) Political instability:

Political instability can have a negative impact on economic growth, as it can discourage investment and reduce the confidence of investors. India has experienced political instability in the past, and the government needs to ensure that the country remains politically stable in order to maintain its economic growth.

4) Lack of skilled labor force:

India faces a shortage of skilled labor, which can hinder the growth of various industries. The government is addressing this issue through various initiatives, such as the Skill India program, which aims to provide vocational training to young people and improve the quality of the workforce.

Government Policies to Promote Economic Growth

The government of India has taken several steps to promote economic growth in the country that includes:

1) Reforms in agriculture, manufacturing, and service sectors:

The government has implemented various reforms aimed at promoting the growth of the agriculture, manufacturing, and service sectors. The reforms include liberalizing trade policies, reducing red tape, and promoting entrepreneurship. The government has also implemented various programs aimed at promoting the development of these sectors, such as the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, which provides insurance to farmers against crop losses, and the Make in India program, which aims to make India a hub for global manufacturing.

2) Policies to attract foreign investment:

The government has implemented various policies aimed at attracting foreign investment, such as the 100% FDI policy in various sectors, which allows foreign companies to invest in India without any restrictions. The government has also established various institutions, such as the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund, which aims to attract foreign investment and promote infrastructure development.

3) Programs for skill development and employment generation

The government has implemented various programs aimed at developing the skills of the workforce and creating employment opportunities. The Skill India program is one of the major initiatives aimed at improving the quality of the workforce, while the Pradhan Mantri Rojgar Protsahan Yojana aims to provide incentives to companies that employ young people.

4) Investment in infrastructure development

The government is investing heavily in infrastructure development in order to address the gaps in the country’s infrastructure. The Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, which aims to provide rural areas with all-weather roads, and the Atal Bhujal Yojana, which aims to improve groundwater management, are some of the major initiatives aimed at improving infrastructure in the country.

India’s economic growth has been a major focus of policy makers since independence, and has been the driving force behind the country’s progress over the past few decades. The growth of the agriculture, manufacturing, and service sectors, as well as the growth of foreign investment, have been the major contributors to India’s economic growth. Despite these achievements, the country still faces major challenges, such as poverty, income inequality, inadequate infrastructure, political instability, and a shortage of skilled labor. The government is working to address these challenges through various initiatives and policies aimed at promoting economic growth. The future prospects for India’s economic growth are bright, and the country has the potential to become one of the major economic powers in the world.

FAQs related to “India’s Economic Growth”

What has been the growth rate of india’s economy in recent years.

India’s economy has been growing at a rate of around 7% in recent years. In the financial year 2021, India’s economy grew by 11.7%, making it one of the fastest growing economies in the world.

What are the major drivers of India’s economic growth?

The major drivers of India’s economic growth are the agriculture, manufacturing, and service sectors. The growth of these sectors is driven by various factors, such as increased investment, improved infrastructure, and increased exports.

What are the major challenges facing India’s economic growth?

The major challenges facing India’s economic growth include poverty, income inequality, inadequate infrastructure, political instability, and a shortage of skilled labor.

What initiatives has the government taken to promote economic growth in India?

The government has taken various initiatives to promote economic growth in India, such as implementing reforms in agriculture, manufacturing, and service sectors, attracting foreign investment, promoting skill development and employment generation, and investing in infrastructure development.

What is the Skill India program?

The Skill India program is a government initiative aimed at improving the quality of the workforce in India. The program provides vocational training to young people and helps to address the shortage of skilled labor in the country.

What is the Make in India program?

The Make in India program is a government initiative aimed at making India a hub for global manufacturing. The program provides various incentives to companies that invest in India and promotes entrepreneurship in the country.

What is the Pradhan Mantri Rojgar Protsahan Yojana?

The Pradhan Mantri Rojgar Protsahan Yojana is a government program aimed at creating employment opportunities in India. The program provides incentives to companies that employ young people and helps to address the problem of unemployment in the country.

What is the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund?

The National Investment and Infrastructure Fund is a government institution aimed at attracting foreign investment and promoting infrastructure development in India. The institution provides funding for infrastructure projects and helps to address the gap in the country’s infrastructure.

What is the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana?

The Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana is a government initiative aimed at providing financial inclusion to the poor in India. The program provides access to bank accounts and other financial services to people who do not have access to these services.

What is the future outlook for India’s economic growth?

The future outlook for India’s economic growth is positive, and the country has the potential to become one of the major economic powers in the world. The continued growth of the economy will have a positive impact on the standard of living of the people of India.

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78 Economic Growth Essay Topics

🏆 best essay topics on economic growth, 📚 economic growth research paper examples, 🎓 most interesting economic growth research titles, 💡 simple economic growth essay ideas.

• Hospitality Industry in Economic Growth and Development
• Sustainability of Economic Growth
• Institutions and Economic Growth
• Social Determinants of Health: Economic Growth Effect
• What Is the Best Way to Stimulate Economic Growth?
• Moral Dimensions of Economic Growth
• Joseph Schumpeter’s Evolutionary Approach to Economic Growth
• Debt Burden and Sustainable Economic Growth in Nigeria This paper examines the relationship effects of debt burden on sustainable economic growth using Nigeria as a case study.
• Whether Infinite Economic Growth Is Possible The author believes that there is a number of reasons why endless economic development is impossible in practice.
• Bangladesh: Stimulating Economic Growth It is crucial to address the digital literacy level in rural Bangladesh to stimulate economic growth, as it is deficient nowadays.
• Transportation Developments and Subsequent Economic Growth From 1865 to 1900 This essay discusses the main factors of increasing economic growth through transportation, and the reasons for such a connection are presented.
• Operations, Cash Budgets, and Economic Growth The purpose of working capital management is to ensure that an entity has sufficient funds to cover operational expenses and short-term maturing debts at any given point in time.
• Deficit Spending and Economic Growth To gain an in-depth understanding of the economic outcomes of the Great Recession and other financial catastrophes, it is crucial to grasp the concept of deficit spending.
• Timor-Leste: Effects of Tourism on the Economic Growth The tourism sector in Timor-Leste, just like in any other Southeast Asian countries has an immense potential to contribute to the country’s economic growth.
• Long-Term Economic Growth in the East Asian States Although immigrants contribute positively to the economic status of East Asia, they cause overpopulation, native culture erosion, low wages, and unemployment.
• United Kingdom-Ghana Economic Growth Disparities The purpose of this paper is to explore some of the contributing factors that have led to economic growth disparities between the United Kingdom and Ghana.
• Economic Growth of East Asian States: The Impact of Foreign Workers Foreign workers perform essential skills and have affirmative productivity influences, thus, are integral to the long-term economic growth of East Asian states.
• Economic Issues: Factors of Production Growth and Unemployment Rates Assessing the factors such as the rates of production growth, the selected financial systems, and the rates of unemployment is essential for determining the threat to the state economy.
• Sports Facilities Development for Economic Growth Sports facilities do not contribute to the economic growth of the urban environment in their vicinity. There is no correlation between existing capacity and economic benefits.
• Trade in Environmental Goods and Economic Growth This paper analyzes how trading in environmental-friendly goods and services may be important in improving the quality of the environment and promoting economic development.
• China’s and India’s Economic Growth Experiences China is a country that has been in a position to have poverty reduction this has been due to the strategies that have been used in the country by the Chinese people.
• Trends and Projections of the United States Economic Growth The economic growth rate of a country is not constant over time, but it exhibits phases of expansion, stagnation, and decline.
• The Industrial Revolution and Economic Growth The Industrial Revolution began to lay the foundation for the first market economies where goods were sold and purchased, resulting in the exchange and accumulation of wealth.
• The Industrial Revolution and Economic Growth History The Industrial Revolution had an impact on various spheres of European society. Its primary consequence was urbanization; people started to move to cities to find jobs.
• The Relationship Between Unemployment and Economic Growth Among the factors that define economic growth and development, human resources and unemployment are considered to be the most vital.
• Industrial Revolution’s Input to Economic Growth The industrial revolution created many working places all over the United Kingdom, whereas the population of the state became more educated and competent.
• Dubai’s Economic Growth and Laziness of Poor The unprecedented growth of Dubai’s economy started in the 1970s. Dubai’s success provides an important lesson in the importance of human capital development.
• Economic Growth Factors in Australia External factors such as Consumer Price Index (CPI), consumer behavior, and inflation rate play a very important role in stimulating economic growth.
• Global Warming Problems due to Economic Growth This paper investigates if it is possible to deal with global warming by reducing CO2 emissions and energy consumption without any threats to economic development.
• China’s Economic Growth and Manufacturing The enhanced economic growth, which China is currently experiencing, coexists with a drop in the manufacturing entrepreneurships’ performance.
• Trade Openness and Economic Growth’s Relationship In the article “The Relationship Between Trade Openness and Economic Growth,” authors discover aspects of measuring trade openness and its impact on economic growth.
• Economic Growth and Market Dynamics Gross domestic product (GDP) is a measure of the value of all services and goods produced in a certain period of time.
• Economic Growth and Expansion The acquisition of smaller companies, as well as creating mergers with the companies helps considerably when it comes to choosing an appropriate risk management strategy.
• Absorptive Capacity and the Effects of Foreign Direct Investment on Economic Growth
• Background Factors Facilitating Economic Growth Using Linear Regression and Soft Regression
• Accounting for the Decline in AFDC Caseloads: Welfare Reform or Economic Growth
• Defense Spending and Economic Growth in Turkey
• Building the Skills for Economic Growth and Competitiveness in Sri Lanka
• Capital Account Liberalization and Economic Growth in Developing Economies
• Accumulation, Technical Progress, and Increasing Returns in the Economic Growth of East Asia
• Rebalancing China’s Economic Growth: Some Insights From Japan’s Experience
• Achieving Sustainable Economic Growth and Development in Communities Across the United States
• China’s Economic Growth 1978-2025: What We Know Today About China’s Economic Growth Tomorrow
• Beyond Economic Growth: The Genuine Progress of Hong Kong From 1968 to 2010
• Economic Growth and Capital Flows in European Countries in Pre and Post-crisis Periods
• Adjustment Policies and Economic Growth in Developing Countries
• Linear and Nonlinear Causality Between Sectoral Electricity Consumption and Economic Growth
• Africa’s Recent Economic Growth: What Are the Contributing Factors
• Financial Development and Economic Growth: An Egg-and-Chicken Problem
• Banking Sector Development and Economic Growth in Central and Southeastern Europe Countries
• Measuring Intangible Capital and Its Contribution to Economic Growth in Europe
• Crime, Justice, and Growth in South Africa: Toward a Plausible Contribution From Criminal Justice to Economic Growth
• Optimal Economic Growth With Recursive Preferences: Decreasing Rate of Time Preference
• Aging and Economic Growth: The Role of Factor Markets and Fundamental Pension Reforms
• Challenge Facing China’s Economic Growth in Its Aging but Not Affluent Era
• Breaking Down the Barriers to Technological Progress: How U.S. Policy Can Promote Higher Economic Growth
• Finding the Cointegration and Causal Linkages Between Electricity Production and Economic Growth in Pakistan
• Accounting for Agricultural Decline With Economic Growth in Taiwan
• Labor Markets and Economic Growth: Lessons From Korea’s Industrialization, 1970-1990
• Bank and Non-Bank Financial Deepening and Economic Growth: The Nigerian Experience (1981–2010)
• Migrant Workers’ Remittances and Economic Growth: The Role of Financial Development
• Capital Flows and Economic Growth Across Spectral Frequencies: Evidence From Turkey
• Breaking Boundaries: Economic Growth in Canada in Relation to Immigration
• Population Growth and Endogenous Technological Change: Australian Economic Growth in the Long Run
• Addressing Smart Economic Growth by Specific Policies in the European Higher Education Area
• Determining the Relationship Between Financial Development and Economic Growth
• Capital Quality Improvement and the Sources of Economic Growth in the Euro Area
• Economic Growth and Climate Change in a Decentralized Economy
• Biodiversity and Economic Growth: Stabilization Versus Preservation of the Ecological Dynamics
• Living Standard and Economic Growth: The Relationship Through the Nonparametric Approach
• Agglomeration Economies, Economic Growth and the New Economic Geography in Mexico
• Financial Deepening and Economic Growth in Developing Countries
• Banking Structure and Regional Economic Growth
• A Causal Relationship Between Fossil Fuel Consumption and Economic Growth in the World
• Bridging and Bonding Social Capital: Which Type Is Good for Economic Growth
• China’s Eighteenth-Century Economic Growth and Imperial Power
• Financial Sector Development and Economic Growth
• British Economic Growth 1856-1973: The Post-War Period in Historical Perspective

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These essay examples and topics on Economic Growth were carefully selected by the StudyCorgi editorial team. They meet our highest standards in terms of grammar, punctuation, style, and fact accuracy. Please ensure you properly reference the materials if you’re using them to write your assignment.

This essay topic collection was updated on December 28, 2023 .

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Jamie Dimon Issues an Economic Warning

The JPMorgan Chase chief executive used his annual letter to shareholders to flag higher-for-longer inflation, uncertain growth prospects and widening political divisions.

By Andrew Ross Sorkin ,  Ravi Mattu ,  Bernhard Warner ,  Sarah Kessler ,  Michael J. de la Merced ,  Lauren Hirsch and Ephrat Livni

Jamie Dimon sees America at a ‘Pivotal Moment’

Jamie Dimon’s annual letter to JPMorgan Chase shareholders has just been published. The widely read note offers a glimpse of his views on not just business, but the economy at a “pivotal moment for America and the free world,” with deep divisions at home and global uncertainty.

Here are some highlights.

The economy is resilient but the government underpinning it is a red flag. Consumers are spending and investors expect a soft landing. But Dimon warns that the economy is being fueled by government spending and rising deficits. “The deficits today are even larger and occurring in boom times — not as the result of a recession — and they have been supported by quantitative easing, which was never done before the great financial crisis,” he writes.

Inflation may be sticky. “These markets seem to be pricing in at a 70% to 80% chance of a soft landing — modest growth along with declining inflation and interest rates,” Dimon writes, adding that the odds are actually a lot lower.

Global uncertainty is another dark cloud. The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East could further “disrupt energy and food markets, migration, and military and economic relationships.” That shock coincides with a surge in public investment to power a green transition, restructure supply chains and trade relationships, and boost health care spending.

Industrial policy is needed but should be limited and targeted. Dimon says the U.S. must be tough with China, but engage with Beijing. That includes establishing independence on supplies of materials crucial to national security, like rare earth, semiconductors and 5G infrastructure. (According to Dimon, the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPs Act get it right.)

Dimon warns about the deep political divisions at home. Dimon doesn’t explicitly weigh in on the election (his public backing for some of Donald Trump ’s economic policies caused a stir at Davos in January), but said the U.S. is grappling with “highly charged, emotional and political” issues centering around the border security crisis and the “fraying of the American dream.”

On Basel 3 endgame: Dimon reiterated his concerns that many of the proposed banking rules are “flawed and poorly calibrated.”

On corporate governance: Dimon argues that proxy advisory firms like ISS have become too influential (he recently backed Disney in its fight against Nelson Peltz). He is opposed to recent efforts to split chairman and C.E.O. roles and thinks the universal proxy “makes it easier to put poorly qualified directors on a board.”

HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING

Janet Yellen sees progress in China relations, but warns there’s “more work to do.” The Treasury secretary concluded meetings in Beijing on Monday saying that ties between the nations had stabilized, but it was unclear how the relationship would endure in an election year. Her comments came as the Biden administration agreed to give Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC $6.6 billion in grants to begin manufacturing in Arizona in 2028.

Brazil’s supreme court opens an investigation into Elon Musk. Alexandre de Moraes, the chief justice, opened the instruction of justice inquiry after Musk said he would reactivate some X accounts that the judge had ordered blocked. The accounts weren’t disclosed. Moraes has been investigating “digital militias” accused of spreading disinformation.

Gold hits a record high and an oil rally takes a breather. The safe-haven asset reached more than $2,300 a troy ounce , buoyed by worries over a widening conflict in the Middle East and higher demand for the precious metal from central banks and Chinese consumers. The price of Brent crude fell on Monday to trade near $90 a barrel, down from a five-month high reached last week.

Is it show time for Warner Bros. Discovery?

Today marks the two-year anniversary of the Warner Bros. Discovery mega deal closing. Crossing that milestone means that the entertainment giant, which owns HBO, CNN and a lucrative piece of the March Madness broadcasts, can now strike a deal without facing a huge tax hit.

The industry is ripe for consolidation , given challenges in cable and streaming. An obstacle is President Biden’s antitrust cops. “Regulatory constraints are limiting what deals can get done, which is the case in most industries,” Rob Kindler, the global chair of the M.&A. Group at Paul, Weiss, told DealBook.

Warner Bros. Discovery hasn’t gone as hoped. Its stock is down 66 percent since the deal closed as its bet on streaming has languished (alongside rivals not named Netflix). The legacy cable business has been a bigger drag, hurt by cord-cutting.

Its $44 billion debt mountain could also make an acquisition more difficult. But John Malone, the media mogul and a board member, said in November that cash flow is improving, which could set the company up to scout for deals.

A merger with Paramount seems unlikely. Shares fell 5 percent when talks between the two leaked in December, a sign that investors may not look enthusiastically on the company increasing its exposure to linear media. It’s probably a moot point anyhow with Paramount in exclusive talks with Skydance .

Even still, would an alliance with Paramount’s TV networks, like, CNN and CBS through a spinoff or divestiture make sense, down the line?

Targeting Comcast could face challenges, too. Investors may like the potential to combine their cable, studio and streaming businesses. But regulators would likely have tough questions.

Still, don’t count out a deal. As Barry Diller told The Times last year : There seems to always be interest in the Warner media properties. “Whether that will happen depends on whether someone wants to take it,” said Diller, a longtime friend of the Warner Bros. Discovery chief, David Zaslav.

Rethinking the deals-are-bad trope

For decades, the common wisdom in corporate America — as encapsulated in the 2004 book “Mastering the Merger,” by two Bain & Company consultants — was that for all the billions spent on mergers, roughly 70 percent failed.

But a new white paper by one of the book’s authors and two other colleagues finds that the inverse is now true: 70 percent of takeovers succeed . DealBook got the first look at the research to learn what had changed.

Companies have gotten smarter about M.&A. In 2004, the defining deals of the era — including that of AOL-Time Warner — were meant to be transformative and deliver big savings. Today the goals are more modest, such as expanding into new geographies or adjacent businesses, or adding new talent.

Acquirers are also getting more practice. Having more-conservative aims for mergers means companies can do more of them, justifying having in-house teams of M.&A. specialists who can better identify promising acquisitions and make them work. One advancement: more sophisticated analysis of potential takeovers, compared with earlier deals that often relied on less exacting financial considerations like synergies.

“Frequent acquirers have the experience and capability to do the diligence that’s required,” Suzanne Kumar, a Bain vice president and one of the white paper’s authors, told DealBook, pointing to Thermo Fisher Scientific, Constellation Brands and tech giants.

Serial acquirers tend to have better returns. Between 2000 and 2010, companies that did at least one deal a year had 10-year total shareholder returns that were 57 percent higher than businesses that did no deals, Bain found. Between 2012 and 2022, that spread rose to 130 percent — a finding that surprised the researchers.

Unionization efforts come to Harvard Yard

With car companies on high alert over the United Auto Workers’ efforts to ramp up labor organizing, the union has racked up a series of wins far from the factory floor — on college campuses.

The most recent victory was at Harvard University. The school’s nontenure track employees — a group of roughly 6,000 that includes faculty, postdoctorate fellows and preceptors — overwhelmingly voted to unionize last week. That opens the door to negotiations for higher wages, improved job security and bolstering workplace protection.

The divide brings another source of tension to campus. Harvard has been embroiled in a fight over free speech and safety ever since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, spurring a debate that led to a wave of high-level resignations.

Harvard is far from alone. Staff at Wellesley College and New York University also voted to unionize this year, joining efforts by adjunct professors and postdocs at Boston University, Columbia, Rutgers and the University of Connecticut.

The U.A.W. is at the center of the push. The union has been branching into higher education for years. And its hard-knuckled tactics in securing new contracts from Detroit’s Big Three automakers last year have given it momentum.

After N.Y.U.’s successful unionization vote, Shawn Fain, the U.A.W.’s president, hailed the moment as a historic one for labor organizing efforts on America’s university campuses. “We’ve got their back,” he said .

The week ahead

Congress returns today from its two-week recess to find Ukraine, the TikTok bill and repairing the Baltimore bridge in the spotlight — and a possible House leadership challenge looming. Elsewhere, inflation, central banks and the new earnings season will also be in focus.

Here’s what to watch:

Tuesday: Google’s Cloud Next developers conference opens amid expectations that the tech giant will make a raft of announcements to do with artificial intelligence.

Wednesday: The March Consumer Price Index is set for release. Economists forecast that overall inflation rose by 3.5 percent on an annualized basis, a slight increase from February. Core C.P.I., which removes food and fuel, is expected to have cooled.

Minutes from the last Fed meeting are also due to be published.

Elsewhere, President Biden will hold talks at the White House with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan. On the agenda : trade, A.I. and China. Also looming over the summit is Nippon Steel’s $14 billion bid for U.S. Steel.

Thursday: It’s decision day on rates for the European Central Bank. Inflation has fallen relatively quickly across much of Europe, prompting the question: Will the E.C.B. cut interest rates before the Fed?

Friday: Wall Street giants begin reporting first-quarter results, including JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and BlackRock.

THE SPEED READ

The luxury group Puig, owner of the brands Paco Rabanne and Charlotte Tilbury, plans to list in Spain and aims to raise more than 2.5 billion euros ($2.7 billion) in what would be the sector’s biggest I.P.O. in years. (FT)

Could investors’ relative apathy for European stocks push the continent’s biggest oil companies to consider bigger listings in the U.S. ? (Bloomberg Opinion)

Josh Shapiro, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, has warned that the Biden administration’s decision to pause liquefied natural gas projects could hurt the party’s chances in November. (FT)

“ Maryland Passes 2 Major Privacy Bills , Despite Tech Industry Pushback” (NYT)

Best of the rest

Solar eclipse mania has gripped North America, and there’s good news : The weather should cooperate for a decent viewing across big parts of the U.S. (NYT)

South Carolina has topped Caitlin Clark and Iowa to win the women’s national basketball championship. Up tonight: UConn takes on Purdue — and there’s a Bill Murray connection . (The Athletic, WSJ)

We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to [email protected] .

Andrew Ross Sorkin is a columnist and the founder and editor at large of DealBook. He is a co-anchor of CNBC’s "Squawk Box" and the author of “Too Big to Fail.” He is also a co-creator of the Showtime drama series "Billions." More about Andrew Ross Sorkin

Ravi Mattu is the managing editor of DealBook, based in London. He joined The New York Times in 2022 from the Financial Times, where he held a number of senior roles in Hong Kong and London. More about Ravi Mattu

Bernhard Warner is a senior editor for DealBook, a newsletter from The Times, covering business trends, the economy and the markets. More about Bernhard Warner

Sarah Kessler is an editor for the DealBook newsletter and writes features on business and how workplaces are changing. More about Sarah Kessler

Michael de la Merced joined The Times as a reporter in 2006, covering Wall Street and finance. Among his main coverage areas are mergers and acquisitions, bankruptcies and the private equity industry. More about Michael J. de la Merced

Lauren Hirsch joined The Times from CNBC in 2020, covering deals and the biggest stories on Wall Street. More about Lauren Hirsch

Ephrat Livni reports from Washington on the intersection of business and policy for DealBook. Previously, she was a senior reporter at Quartz, covering law and politics, and has practiced law in the public and private sectors.   More about Ephrat Livni