Editorial introduction

• Authors: Andreas Irmen

Abstracts

EN

“Poverty has no causes, wealth has causes”-this statement, attributed to the development economist Peter Bauer (1915-2002),1 may serve as the title of a book on the entire history of growth theory since Adam Smith's An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations (Smith, 1776). Indeed to understand why the standard of living diefrs across people, countries and time we need to understand the causes of wealth. This is the topic of the current Economics and Business Review. With this issue the Review honours the outstanding contribution of Professor Oded Galor, Herbert H. Goldberger Professor of Economics at Brown University, to the field of growth theory. At the same time it celebrates the degree of doctor honoris causa that the Poznań University of Economics and Business conferred on him in 2019.2 Oded Galor's eminent research on the causes and the consequences of economic growth has substantially advanced our understanding of how and why economies accumulate wealth diefrently. His research has a tremendous impact on the scientific community. eTh breadth as well as the depth of his research agenda is impressive.3 Seminal contributions to the fields of inequality and economic growth (Galor & Zeira, 1993) and of comparative development (Ashraf & Galor, 2011) stand out. Research papers like Galor and Moav (2002) and Ashraf and Galor (2013) initiated a new literature on the deep roots in comparative economic development. In the profession and beyond, Oded Galor is probably best known as the founder of Unified Growth eThory (Galor, 2005, 2011). This fascinating theory depicts humanity's process of economic development from the Malthusian Regime to the Modern Growth Regime in a single analytical framework that accounts for the specifics of each regime as well as for the endogenous transition between them. ehT first paper of this issue is Oded Galor's article eTh journey of humanity: Roots of inequality in the wealth of nations. Here the author provides a brief and concise world economic history from the vantage point of Unified Growth ehTory. Covering the time span from the appearance of Homo sapiens some 300,000 years up to now his focus is on two striking mysteries of human history namely, i) the emergence of sustained economic growth in large parts of

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Ekonomiczny w Poznaniu
• Journal: Economics and Business Review
• Year: 2020
• Volume: 6(20)
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 3-6

Dates

published

2020

Contributors

author

Andreas Irmen

• Department of Economics and Management, University of Luxembourg, Campus Kirchberg (Bloc G), 6, Rue Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, L-1359 Luxembourg, Luxembourg, [e-mail], ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0410-8855.

References

• Acemoglu, D. (2007). Equilibrium bias of technology. Econometrica, 75(5), 1371-1410.
• Acemoglu, D. (2010). When does labor scarcity encourage innovation?. Journal of Political Economy, 118(6), 1037-1078
• Ashraf, Q., & Galor, O. (2011). Dynamics and stagnation in the Malthusian Epoch. American Economic Review, 101(5), 2003-2041.
• Ashraf, Q. & Galor, O. (2013). The ’Out of Africa’ hypothesis, human genetic diversity, and comparative economic development. American Economic Review, 103(1), 1-46.
• Galor, O. (2005). From stagnation to growth: Unified Growth Theory. In P. Aghion, S. Durlauf (Eds.), Handbook of economic growth (pp. 171-293). Amsterdam: North Holland.
• Galor, O. (2011). Unified Growth Theory. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Galor, O., & Moav, O. (2002). Natural selection and the origin of economic growth. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 117(4), 1133-1191.
• Galor, O., & Zeira, J. (1993). Income distribution and macroeconomics. Review of Economic Studies, 60(1), 35-52.
• Hicks, J. R. (1932). The theory of wages. London: Macmillan
• Irmen, A. (2017). Capital- and labor-saving technical change in an aging economy. International Economic Review, 58(1), 261-285.
• Irmen, A. (2019). Review concerning the proposal to confer the degree of Doctor
• Honoris Causa from Poznań University of Economics and Business on Oded Galor. In Odedowi Galorowi-doctor honoris causa (pp. 82-94). Poznań: Poznań University of Economics and Business.
• Irmen, A., & Tabaković, A. (2017). Endogenous capital- and labor-augmenting technical change in the neoclassical growth model. Journal of Economic Theory, 170, 346-384.
• Malthus, T. R. (1798). An essay on the principle of population. Oxford: Oxford University Press (reprint 1999).
• Pinker, S. (2018). Enlightenment now: The case for reason, science, humanism, and progress. New York: Penguin Books Limited/Viking.
• Radner, R. (1961). Paths of economic growth that are optimal with regard only to final states: A turnpike theorem. Review of Economic Studies, 28, 98-104.
• Smith, A. (1776): An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. Oxford: Clarendon Press (reprint 1976).
• von Neumann, J. (1945). A model of general economic equilibrium (transl. by G. Morgenstern). Review of Economic Studies, 13, 1-9.

Identifiers

DOI

10.18559/ebr.2020.2.1

Biblioteka Nauki

2159456