Chapter 25 — Further Reading

Foundational works on growth

Robert Solow, "A Contribution to the Theory of Economic Growth," Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1956 The foundational paper. Nobel Prize 1987.

Paul Romer, "Endogenous Technological Change," Journal of Political Economy, 1990 Romer's model of growth driven by ideas and innovation — the foundation of "endogenous growth theory." Nobel Prize 2018.

Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson, "The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation," American Economic Review, 2001 The settler-mortality paper that launched the institutions-and-growth literature.

Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, Crown, 2012 The most influential popular book on growth and institutions. Readable, compelling, and well-argued.

On the East Asian miracle (case study 1)

World Bank, The East Asian Miracle: Economic Growth and Public Policy, 1993 The comprehensive study of why East Asian economies grew so fast. Balanced treatment of markets and government intervention.

Alice Amsden, Asia's Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialization, Oxford University Press, 1989 Amsden's argument that Korea's growth was driven by government intervention, not just markets. A counterpoint to the free-market view.

Ha-Joon Chang, Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective, Anthem, 2002 Chang argues that today's rich countries used protectionist and interventionist policies during their development — and that requiring developing countries to follow free-market policies is hypocritical.

On Argentina (case study 2)

Alan Taylor, "Latin America and Foreign Capital in the Twentieth Century: Economics, Politics, and Institutional Change," NBER Working Paper, 2003 Economic history of Argentine decline with comparative perspective.

Rafael Di Tella and Robert MacCulloch, "Why Doesn't Capitalism Flow to Poor Countries?" Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2009 On why some countries persistently fail to attract investment despite having educated populations and natural resources.

On institutions and growth broadly

Douglass North, Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance, Cambridge University Press, 1990 North (Nobel 1993) argues that institutions are the fundamental determinant of long-run economic performance.

Jeffrey Sachs, The End of Poverty, Penguin, 2005 Sachs emphasizes geography, public health, and aid as keys to growth — a counterpoint to the institutions-only view.

William Easterly, The Elusive Quest for Growth, MIT Press, 2001 Easterly's critical look at why development assistance and policy advice have so often failed. Emphasizes the difficulty of institutional reform.

On convergence

Robert Barro and Xavier Sala-i-Martin, "Convergence," Journal of Political Economy, 1992 The key empirical paper on conditional convergence.

Lant Pritchett, "Divergence, Big Time," Journal of Economic Perspectives, 1997 Pritchett shows that the gap between rich and poor countries has widened, not narrowed, over the last century — unconditional convergence is not happening.

On growth and the environment

William Nordhaus, The Climate Casino, 2013 — cited in Chapter 15; relevant here for the growth-environment tradeoff.

Vaclav Smil, Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities, MIT Press, 2019 A comprehensive interdisciplinary look at growth — biological, economic, energy, material. Smil is skeptical about the sustainability of current growth trajectories.

A reading order recommendation

Read Acemoglu and Robinson's Why Nations Fail. It's the most accessible and influential book on why growth varies so dramatically across countries.

For the formal growth model, read Solow (1956) — it's short and surprisingly accessible.

For the East Asian story, read the World Bank's 1993 East Asian Miracle report.

Part V is complete. Part VI — Money, Banking, and Monetary Policy — opens with Chapter 26.