Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #287917 in Books
• Published on: 2003-11-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 672 pages

Customer Reviews

The book on growth
Once you start to think about the wealth of nations and its origins, other fields in economics seem to become less significant. In the last century, some countries, such as Japan and the Asian tigers (despite their recent troubles) have gone from being amongst the worlds poorest, to being the envy of even the developed world, while Argentina, for example, has sunk from having one of the world's highest GDP/capita ratios to dismal mediocrity. Economic growth theory wants to explain why some nations starve while others are obese, and it is well worth knowing.

This is _the_ textbook on economic growth, the one you will find in the bibliography for almost any scholarly paper on the subject. It is intended for people with some background in economics (such as econ undergrads), and assumes proficiency in maths. For a more basic introduction, try Charles Jones' 'Introduction to Economic Growth', for a more advanced one try Aghion and Howitt's 'Endogenous Growth Theory'.

THE book on growth theory
This book is vary clear and covers all major growth models. Th authers are leading growth economists and the leturature cevered is really essential.
Why did I give it 4 star and not 5?
Simply because I did not like the way they outlined the creative distruction model. I really did not understand the model untile I read the (Endogeneous Growth Theory) book. To their credit, they tried to contiue using the same notation in earlier chapters, which makes sence.

otherwise, the book is the perfect reference for growth theory.

The Best Graduate Book on Economic Growth - so far
For students interested in economic growth this is the best book available. What I particularly like in this book is the breadth of coverage, starting with the simplest models and then adding "layers of complexity". While doing this, the authors manage to compare the models they present with previous ones emphasizing similarities and differences. It also covers empiric studies on growth and convergence and has a good mathematical appendix on continuous time dynamic optimization.
I say this is the best book in growth - so far, because Daron Acemoglu has a book coming out soon and I think it is also great (He had a draft version on his webpage).