Robert E. Lucas : The Industrial Revolution: Past and Future
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arthur garbayo
Feb 8, 2012, 3:53:45 PM2/8/12
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Agradeço ao professor Márcio Garcia, da PUC-Rio, o repasse
For your information a nice article by Robert Lucas which provides an excellent historical perspective on population and production growth.
http://minneapolisfed.org/publications_papers/pub_display.cfm?id=3333
We live in a world of staggering and unprecedented income inequality. Production per person in the wealthiest economy, the United States, is something like 15 times production per person in the poorest economies of Africa and South Asia. Since the end of the European colonial age, in the 1950s and ’60s, the economies of South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong have been transformed from among the very poorest in the world to middle-income societies with a living standard about one-third of America’s or higher. In other economies, many of them no worse off in 1960 than these East Asian “miracle” economies were, large fractions of the population still live in feudal sectors with incomes only slightly above subsistence levels. How are we to interpret these successes and failures? Economists, today, are divided on many aspects of this question, but I think that if we look at the right evidence, organized in the right way, we can get very close to a coherent and reliable view of the changes in the wealth of nations that have occurred in the last two centuries and those that are likely to occur in this one. The Asian miracles are only one chapter in the larger story of the world economy since World War II, and that story in turn is only one chapter in the history of the industrial revolution. I will set out what I see as the main facts of the economic history of the recent past, with a minimum of theoretical interpretation, and try to see what they suggest about the future of the world economy. I do not think we can understand the contemporary world without understanding the events that have given rise to it.
Best,
ALVARO MANOEL, Senior Economist
THE WORLD BANK, Economic Policy & Debt Department (PRMED),--
For your information a nice article by Robert Lucas which provides an excellent historical perspective on population and production growth.
http://minneapolisfed.org/publications_papers/pub_display.cfm?id=3333
We live in a world of staggering and unprecedented income inequality. Production per person in the wealthiest economy, the United States, is something like 15 times production per person in the poorest economies of Africa and South Asia. Since the end of the European colonial age, in the 1950s and ’60s, the economies of South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong have been transformed from among the very poorest in the world to middle-income societies with a living standard about one-third of America’s or higher. In other economies, many of them no worse off in 1960 than these East Asian “miracle” economies were, large fractions of the population still live in feudal sectors with incomes only slightly above subsistence levels. How are we to interpret these successes and failures? Economists, today, are divided on many aspects of this question, but I think that if we look at the right evidence, organized in the right way, we can get very close to a coherent and reliable view of the changes in the wealth of nations that have occurred in the last two centuries and those that are likely to occur in this one. The Asian miracles are only one chapter in the larger story of the world economy since World War II, and that story in turn is only one chapter in the history of the industrial revolution. I will set out what I see as the main facts of the economic history of the recent past, with a minimum of theoretical interpretation, and try to see what they suggest about the future of the world economy. I do not think we can understand the contemporary world without understanding the events that have given rise to it.
Best,
ALVARO MANOEL, Senior Economist
THE WORLD BANK, Economic Policy & Debt Department (PRMED),
Para ter mais informação acesse estes portais: www.desenvolvimentistas.com.br e http://www.joserobertoafonso.ecn.br/
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