Economic Growth

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morten Jerven
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Economic Change ◽  
Economic Literature ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Root Cause ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Economic Underdevelopment

The study of long-term growth in Africa has recently been invigorated by the work of economists. To date, this literature has been motivated by explaining a divergence of income and has focused on finding persistent factors that can explain a chronic failure of growth in Africa. This chapter reviews some periods of economic growth in the past two centuries, and suggests that there must be more to learn from studying these periods of economic change and accumulation, particularly because they were accompanied by significant changes in institutions, or how the economy and the society was organized. The African economic history literature does emphasize dynamism—as opposed to persistence, and diversity in outcomes across time and space—in contrast to the average stagnation that has prompted the economic literature. In sum, there is more to learn from studying the history of economic growth in the African past than can be gauged from a search for a root cause of African economic underdevelopment.

Human Progress — And Collapse?

2005 ◽  
Vol 16 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 441-456 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wolfgang E. Kasper
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
The Political ◽  
Structural Flexibility ◽  
The Past ◽  
Social Disintegration ◽  
The World ◽  
Development Institutions

Against the human experience of long-term stagnation and misery, the record of growing prosperity over the past two centuries, and in particular the last fifty years, is astounding. Economic growth owes much to the mobilisation of resources and structural flexibility, but this depends on the ‘software of economic development’ – institutions, which change slowly. Now, old fears and growth-impeding policies are being justified on environmental grounds. One example is Jared Diamond's recent book ‘Collapse’, which discusses the possibility of a swift descent of the world into social disintegration. To anyone familiar with long-term economic history and the theory of growth, the book is pure millennial pessimism. It could become self-fulfilling if environmentalist doomsayers win the political argument with the doers — the engineers, entrepreneurs and economists.

Uneven Centuries

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sevket Pamuk
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Open Economy ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Economic Trends ◽  
History Of

The population and economy of the area within the present-day borders of Turkey has consistently been among the largest in the developing world, yet there has been no authoritative economic history of Turkey until now. This book examines the economic growth and human development of Turkey over the past two hundred years. Taking a comparative global perspective, the book investigates Turkey's economic history through four periods: the open economy during the nineteenth-century Ottoman era, the transition from empire to nation-state that spanned the two world wars and the Great Depression, the continued protectionism and import-substituting industrialization after World War II, and the neoliberal policies and the opening of the economy after 1980. Making use of indices of GDP per capita, trade, wages, health, and education, the book argues that Turkey's long-term economic trends cannot be explained only by immediate causes such as economic policies, rates of investment, productivity growth, and structural change. The book offers a deeper analysis of the essential forces underlying Turkey's development—its institutions and their evolution—to make better sense of the country's unique history and to provide important insights into the patterns of growth in developing countries during the past two centuries.

How the Desert got a Past: A History of Quaternary Research in Australia’s Deserts

2014 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Smith
Keyword(s):  
Climate Changes ◽  
Conceptual Space ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S

This paper examines how the past of desert landscapes has been interpreted since European explorers and scientists first encountered them. It charts the research that created the conceptual space within which archaeologists and Quaternarists now work. Studies from the 1840s–1960s created the notion of a ‘Great Australian Arid Period'. The 1960s studies of Lake Mungo and the Willandra Lakes by Jim Bowler revealed the cyclical nature of palaeolakes, that changed with climate changes in the Pleistocene, and the complexity of desert pasts. SLEADS and other researchers in the 1980s used thermoluminescence techniques that showed further complexities in desert lands beyond the Willandra particularly through new studies in the Strzelecki and Simpson Dunefields, Lake Eyre, Lake Woods and Lake Gregory. Australian deserts are varied and have very different histories. Far from ‘timeless lands', they have carried detailed information about long-term climate changes on continental scales.

scholarly journals Psychocapital and Shangri-Las: How happiness became both a means and end to governmentality

2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Mckay
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Subjective Well Being ◽  
The Past ◽  
Means And Ends ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Mental Well Being ◽  
Politics Of Happiness

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).

The Economic History of South Africa 1948–94

2021 ◽  
pp. 46-65
Author(s):  
Bill Freund ◽  
Vishnu Padayachee
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Economic History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Global And Local ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Way

This chapter addresses the unfolding economic history of South Africa in the apartheid era (1948–94). The chapter is organized according to a periodization with 1971–73 as a marker of the break, and along specific thematic lines. These include a discussion of the way in which this history has been studied and through what theoretical lenses, before engaging with the main issues, including the impact of Afrikaner nationalism on economic growth, the way in which the minerals energy sector, which dominated early perspectives of South African economic history and perspectives, is impacted in this era of National Party rule. An analysis of the role of one major corporation (Anglo American Corporation) in shaping this economic history is followed by an assessment of the impact of the global and local crisis after c.1970 on the South African economy. An abiding theme is that of race and economic development and the way in which the impact of this key relationship of apartheid South Africa on economic growth has been studied.

Australian Economic History : An Alternative View

1983 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 17-19
Author(s):  
D. Broadbent
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Aboriginal People ◽  
History Textbooks ◽  
Alternative View ◽  
Aboriginal Education ◽  
History Of ◽  
Economic Texts ◽  
Area Of Concern ◽  
Economic Landscape

The 1980 National Aboriginal Education Conference went on record as saying it saw that as an ‘area of concern’ history textbooks on Aborigines are racist.Australians’ economic history is racist in that standard economic texts do not discuss Aborigines at all, or mention them only peripherally.The economic history of Australia is usually written from one or two perspectives, both European. The first involves the flow of external capital, labour and entrepreneurship into what was essentially an empty land awaiting exploitation. This has led to emotive pictures of Australia’s economic development in terms of hardy pioneers driving sheep and cattle into remote parts, and hard-working men clearing land for crops, both groups subject to the usual environmental hazards of droughts, floods and natives.The second view has led to the picture of the country riding on the sheep’s back. In economic terms this meant that the profits earned by wool exports (and later gold) generated capital within the country for economic expansion. This is the Staple theory of economic growth. Neither viewpoint takes into account the Aboriginal people. Nor could they, because they are theories of Capitalism, and nineteenth century Capitalism did not have a human face. The profit motive was supreme. Aborigines were not seen as being at all useful to the process of economic growth once it had got under way.Up to a point, however, the Aborigine was useful. He could guide settlers and explorers across inhospitable landscapes and lead them to water. Having done this, he had outlived his usefulness and was hounded to the edges of the new economic landscape – to extinction in many places.

scholarly journals Mnemonic Populism: The Polish Holocaust Law and its Afterlife

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kornelia Kończal
Keyword(s):  
Significant Other ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cultural Foundations ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Heated Debate ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Relationship

In early 2018, the Polish parliament adopted controversial legislation criminalising assertions regarding the complicity of the ‘Polish Nation’ and the ‘Polish State’ in the Holocaust. The so-called Polish Holocaust Law provoked not only a heated debate in Poland, but also serious international tensions. As a result, it was amended only five months after its adoption. The reason why it is worth taking a closer look at the socio-cultural foundations and political functions of the short-lived legislation is twofold. Empirically, the short history of the Law reveals a great deal about the long-term role of Jews in the Polish collective memory as an unmatched Significant Other. Conceptually, the short life of the Law, along with its afterlife, helps capture poll-driven, manifestly moralistic and anti-pluralist imaginings of the past, which I refer to as ‘mnemonic populism’. By exploring the relationship between popular and political images of the past in contemporary Poland, this article argues for joining memory and populism studies in order to better understand what can happen to history in illiberal surroundings.

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