Introduction: Searching for the Secrets of Growth
Keywords:
economic growth, endogenous growth, growth regressions, economic geography, East AsiaAbstract
This introduction to the special issue on national policies and economic growth asks why countries that start from similar positions end up so far apart, opening with the contrast between Argentina and Japan since 1870. It reviews the wave of research set in motion by Romer (1986) and Lucas (1988) and organises the papers of the issue around its main themes: the empirical determinants of growth in cross-country regressions and the stability of policy effects, physical and human capital accumulation, credit markets and financial structure, income inequality, and endogenous fertility. The author argues that the East Asian miracles resist easy replication and that national aggregates may conceal much of what matters, and points to economic geography, the economics of cities and regions, and open-economy models of ideas and integration as the most promising unexplored directions. The closing assessment is deliberately sober: the more research accumulates on economic success, the more elusive and complex its secrets appear.Downloads
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Copyright (c) 1993 William Easterly
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