scholarly journals Productivity Growth and Machinery Investment: A Long-Run Look, 1870–1980

1992 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 307-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Bradford De Long

Over the past century in six major economies, economic growth has been strongly associated with machinery investment, as is the case for a larger group of nations since 1950. Both macroeconomic patterns and narratives of the history of technology suggest that this association is causal—that a high rate of machinery investment appears to be a necessary prerequisite for rapid long-run growth—and points away from possibilities that rapid growth is the cause of high machinery investment or that a high rate of machinery investment is a good proxy for other factors that are important causes of growth.

1988 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 71-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J Boskin

The past seven years of U.S. economic policy and performance constitute a truly remarkable, if confusing, experiment. Few would have guessed in 1980 that inflation would fall rapidly to 4 percent and hold pretty steady during a lengthy recovery; that productivity growth would partially rebound, the national debt more than double, capital imports reach $150 billion in a single year; or that employment would continue to expand at rates envied by other advanced economies. Perhaps fewer still would have predicted two major and two minor tax reforms would be passed in six years, a flip-flop in depreciation schedules, and a top personal tax rate below 30 percent. While it is always easier to draw inferences concerning economic growth, its determinants, and policies affecting the determinants with long historical hindsight, this paper will attempt to provide information, evaluation, and conjecture to draw some tentative lessons about the effects of tax policies in the 1980s on long-run economic growth.


2014 ◽  
pp. 4-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Idrisov ◽  
S. Sinelnikov-Murylev

The paper analyzes the inconsequence and problems of Russian economic policy to accelerate economic growth. The authors consider three components of growth rate (potential, Russian business cycle and world business cycle components) and conclude that in order to pursue an effective economic policy to accelerate growth, it has to be addressed to the potential (long-run) growth component. The main ingredients of this policy are government spending restructuring and budget institutions reform, labor and capital markets reforms, productivity growth.


2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Mckay

In this paper a paradox is revealed in the politics of well-being over the means and ends of happiness. That paradox, in brief, is that although happiness is argued to be the ultimate end of all governmentality, in order to serve as that end, it first needs to be translated into a means for bolstering the economy, for only that way can a teleology of happiness gain a foothold in a world which prioritizes economic growth as an end in itself. To show this the paper gives a history of subjective well-being (SWB) research, and contrasts it with the politics of happiness in the UK, where SWB has in the past decade been translated into a discourse around the psychological wealth of the nation via the concepts of mental capital (MC) and mental well-being (MWB).


2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. e1
Author(s):  
Fulvio Melia

I have recently had the privilege of being appointed Editor-in-Chief of this very exciting and innovative Open Access Journal, and hereby extend a warm welcome to everyone as we launch Astronomy Studies Development, which will seek to publish high quality, peer-reviewed, original manuscripts in all fields of astronomy and astrophysics, though with a particular focus on mathematical techniques and methodology and innovative ideas for instrumental development and modeling in astronomy and astrophysics. The journal will also seek to publish simulations in all areas, including cosmology, particle astrophysics, accretion, and diffuse media. Our journal will include both full length research articles and letter articles, and its coverage extends over solar, stellar, galactic and extragalactic astronomy and astrophysics, and will report original research in all wavelength bands. Astronomy and Astrophysics are rather mature disciplines, with a history of quality journals over the past century or more. So one may reasonably ask why a new journal such as this is needed. Obviously, I myself have answered this question in the affirmative. After a long career in research and publishing, I have the perspective to provide several good reasons for helping to promote the evolution of publishing in Astronomy and Astrophysics to a place more in line with present technology..........


Author(s):  
Konstantinos I. Kakoudakis ◽  
Katerina Papadoulaki

Abstract This chapter illustrates the process of social tourism development in Greece, from the interwar years until the present day. The chapter first sets the discussion within the context of the country's turbulent political, social and economic background, throughout most of the past century, which has exercised significant influence on the development of Greek tourism in general, and social tourism specifically. It then identifies and presents two main phases of social tourism development, highlighting important initiatives and key players that contributed to the incremental evolution of social tourism programmes in Greece, and also events that impeded their implementation and smooth running. Specific emphasis is given to the past four decades, since this time period has largely shaped the contemporary form of Greek social tourism programmes. Therefore, the chapter explicates the close linkages between the establishment of the modern Greek welfare state in the early 1980s, and the development of social tourism as we know it today. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion on the developmental process of contemporary Greek social tourism over time, and the important socioeconomic implications of its current practice in the aftermath of the Greek financial crisis, and in the midst of the refugee crisis in Europe, and the Covid-19 pandemic.


1975 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 137-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. M. Kennedy

Yet another survey of the much-traversed field of Anglo-German relations will seem to many historians of modern Europe to border on the realm of superfluity; probably no two countries have had their relationship to each other so frequently examined in the past century as Britain and Germany. Moreover, even if one restricted such a study to the British side alone, the sheer number of publications upon this topic, or upon only a section of it like the age of ‘appeasement’, is simply too great to allow a compression of existing knowledge into a narrative form that would be anything other than crude and sketchy. The following contribution therefore seeks neither to provide such a general survey, nor, by use of new and detailed archival materials, to concentrate upon a small segment of the history of British policy towards Germany in the period 1864–1939; but instead to consider throughout all these years a particular aspect, namely, the respective arguments of Germanophiles and Germanophobes in Britain and the connection between this dialogue and the more general ideological standpoints of both sides. In so doing, the author has produced a survey which remains embarrassingly summary in detail but does at least attempt to offer a fresh approach to the subject.


Author(s):  
Jesper Rangvid

This chapter examines the relation between long-run economic growth and returns across countries. Have countries that have experienced high GDP growth historically also experienced high stock returns? The chapter contains three main messages. First, there is no clear tendency that countries that have grown fast in the past are also countries that have delivered high stock returns in the past. Second, as in the US, stock prices have in many countries followed economic activity in the long run. Third, real interest rates relate to economic growth across countries in the long run.Another conclusion emerging from this chapter is that long-run stock returns exceed long-run rates of economic growth and long-run risk-free rates by a wide margin.


Author(s):  
Rachel Hallote

When the artistic canon of the Southern Levant coalesced in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, scholars thought of the region, then Ottoman Palestine, as the locus of the Bible. The small-scale nature of the archaeological finds as well as their relative dearth reinforced a reliance on biblical narratives as a framework for understanding the culture of the region. Moreover, early scholarship did not recognize the complex regionalism of the Southern Levant or the diversity of its populations. Consequently, the artistic canon that developed did not represent the historical and archaeological realities of the region. This chapter examines the history of how the artistic canon of the Southern Levant formed over the past century of scholarship, why various scholars of the early and middle twentieth century included particular items in the canon, and why these now entrenched representations may or may not be helpful to the discipline’s future.


Author(s):  
Lane Kenworthy

Abstract: The lesson of the past one hundred years is that as the United States gets richer, we are willing to spend more in order to safeguard against loss and enhance fairness. Advances in social policy come only intermittently, but they do come. And when they come, they usually last. The expansion of public insurance that has occurred over the past century is what we should expect for the future. I consider an array of potential obstacles, including Americans’ dislike of big government, Democrats’ centrism, Democrats’ electoral struggles, the shift to the right in the balance of organized interest group strength, the structure of America’s political system, racial and ethnic diversity, slowing economic growth, and more. None of these is likely to derail America’s slow but steady movement toward an expanded government role in improving economic security, enhancing opportunity, and ensuring decent and rising living standards for all.


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