标题: Book Review on 'Growth' [打印本页] 作者: choi 时间: 5-14-2024 14:19 标题: Book Review on 'Growth' Edward Glaeser, The Urge to Grow; Increasing the standard of living for a nation's citizens will help create mew opportunities and increase social mobility. Wall Street Journal, May 13, 2024, at page A https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture ... ed-victory-2c8bcdc6 https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/ ... victory/ar-BB1mgph2
(book review on Daniel Susskind, Growth; A history and a reckoning. Belknap Press, Apr 15, 2024)
Note:
(a) The German surname Gläser (anglicized as Glaeser) is "occupational name for a glass blower or glazier ['one whose job is fitting glass into windows and doors': Collinsdictionary.com] from an agent derivative of Middle High German and Middle Dutch glas [sic (because it is written to English-speaking audience)] glass." Dictionary of American Family Names (2nd ed), published by Oxford University Press. (The word Glas is defined in Note (b)(iii) below.
(b)
(i)
(A) Daniel Susskind is is a Research Professor in Economics at King's College London (one of the two founding colleges, along with University College London, of the University of London). He received a doctorate in economics from University of Oxford .
(B) This is the book cover. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674294493
(ii)
(A) The Jewish surname Susskind is "from the Yiddish personal name Ziskind German Süsskind literally 'sweet child.' " Dictionary of American Family Names (2nd ed).
(B) The German noun neuter Kind (whose vowel is pronounced the same as that in English noun kid) shares the same (very ancient) origin as kid.
(iii) (modern) German-English dictionary:
* Glas (noun neuter; plural Gläser or Glas): "glass" https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Glas
* süß (adjective masculine): "sweet" https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/süß
* Römer (proper noun masculine; etymology: [German proper noun neuter] Rom [Rome] + -er): "Roman" https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/R%C3%B6mer
* The zum is contraction of zu dem (to the, at the), where zu is the preposition. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/zum 作者: choi 时间: 5-14-2024 14:36
(c)
(i) Thomas Malthus (1766 – 1834; English)
(ii) "He [Susskind] starts with Roy Harrod and Evsey Domar, both of whom, in the 1930s and '40s, studied the accumulation of physical capital such as buildings, machines and roads."
(A) Roy Harrod https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Harrod
(1900-1978; English)
(B) Evsey Domar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evsey_Domar
("was born * * * [in] 1914, in the Polish city of Łódź, which was part of Russia at that time. He was raised and educated in Russian Manchuria in the Russian Far East, then emigrated to the United States in 1936. He received a Bachelor of Arts from UCLA in 1939, a Master of Science from the University of Michigan in 1940, a Master of Science from Harvard University in 1943, and a doctorate from Harvard in 1947. * * * [He worked] at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1957 until the end of his career" He died in 1997 in Concord, Mass)
was Jewish.
Recall that Poland did not exist between 1793 (second partition among Prussia, Habsburg and Russia) and reconstitution of Poland (in effect following armistice on Nov 11, 1918; Russia had withdrawn from Poland after revolution to focus on civil war) confirmed through the Treaty of Versailles of June 1919.
(iii) Harrod-Domar model
(A) ROM Economics explains the model this way:
"The capital output ratio measures the productivity of the investment that takes place. If capital output ratio decreases the economy will be more productive, so higher amounts of output is generated from fewer inputs. This again, leads to higher economic growth.
Rate of growth (Y) = Savings (s)/ capital output ratio (k)"
(B) Economic Growth - What is the Harrod-Domar Model? Tutor2U, last updated Mar 5, 2023 https://www.tutor2u.net/economic ... -harrod-domar-model
("Basically, the model suggests that the economy's rate of growth depends on:
• The level of national saving (S)
• The productivity of capital investment (this is known as the capital-output ratio) The Capital-Output Ratio (COR)
• For example, if £100 worth of capital equipment produces each £10 of annual output, a capital-output ratio of 10 to 1 exists. A 3 to 1 capital-output ratio indicates that only £30 of capital is required to produce each £10 of output annually.
• If the capital-output ratio is low, an economy can produce a lot of output from a little capital. If the capital-output ratio is high then it needs a lot of capital for production, and it will not get as much value of output for the same amount of capital.
* * *
Basic Harrod-Domar model says:
Rate of growth of GDP = Savings ratio / capital output ratio")
I believe that in the preceding formula, the word "ratio" after "Savings" is excrescent.
Of course, in REAL economics there is a lot of calculus. If you go to en.wikipedia.org for this and next (Solow) models, you will not see formulas like these two.
(iv) In the 1950s, Robert Solow and Trevor Swan suggested that growth can come only from unexplained improvements in technology"
(A) Robert Solow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Solow
(1924 – 2023; taught at MIT since 1949; awarded Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1987)
(B) Trevor Swan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trevor_Swan
(1918 – 1989; "was an Australian economist. He is best known for his work on the Solow–Swan growth model, published simultaneously by American economist Robert Solow")
(C) What is Solow(–Swan) growth model, also known as exogenous growth model, about?
Will Kenton, Growth Accounting: Overview and Calculations. Investopedia, Feb 21, 2024. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/growthacctg.asp
(v) "The next leap forward occurred in the 1980s, when Paul Romer and Robert Lucas proposed that the accumulation of a special type of capital—knowledge—could generate increasing returns across the economy as a whole."
(A) Paul Romer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Romer
(1955- ; University Professor at Boston College; "co-receiving the 2018 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (shared with William Nordhaus) for his work in endogenous growth theory")
Römer. A View on Cities, undated https://aviewoncities.com/frankfurt/romer
("The central building, known as 'Zum Römer' gave the town hall its name. 'Zum Römer' means 'at the Roman,' referring to the Roman settlements that existed here long before the city of Frankfurt was founded")
The German words Römer (German noun always has the first letter capitalized) and "zum" is defined at Note (b)(iii).
(B) Exogenous Growth Theory. Corporate Finance Institute, undated https://corporatefinanceinstitut ... nous-growth-theory/
("The Exogenous Growth Theory is a theory[, same as Endogenous Growth Theory,] of neoclassical economics that asserts that outside – exogenous – factors are more critical in determining the success of an economy, industry, or individual business than inside – endogenous – factors. * * * The exogenous growth theory holds that external, primarily macroeconomic variables, rather than industry or business-specific factors, are what ultimately drive growth")
Neoclassical (economics; represented by Milton Friedman) is opposite to Keynesian (economics). The latter favors governmental intervention -- such as stimulus and tax cut in recession, whereas the former says no to such things. The problem is that this makes the government appear doing nothing in recession, which makes the government difficult to survive; the fact is that there is no data to show that intervention or not helps economy -- precisely because economics, by its nature, can not do experiment with a CONTROL group, where everything is the same except change in a perimeter in experimental group.
(D) Robert Lucas, Jr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Lucas_Jr.
(1937-2023; taught at University of Chicago; received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1995)
(vi) "Thinking about knowledge spillovers led Lucas to Jane Jacobs's writings about urban creativity * * * Economic historians, especially Joel Mokyr, also study growth"
(A) Jane Jacobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs
(1916-2006; "was born Jane Isabel Butzner in Scranton, Pennsylvania"/ table: Spouse Robert Jacobs)
"She studied for just two years at Columbia University in New York. Jacobs did not complete her college education": from the Web about Jane Jacobs. She was not an economist.
(B) Joel Mokyr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Mokyr
("was born in Leiden in 1946, into a family of Dutch Jews * * * [received] a PhD in economics from Yale in 1974 * * * became an assistant professor at Northwestern University in 1974, where he has remained ever since"/ table: Spouse: Margalit Mokyr)
I barely heard of Joel (as husband of his wife) after I left Chicago (I did not learn this name while in Chicago). I went to University of Illinois at Chicago in 1984, where Margalit first taught immunology. She was excellent as a teacher, but for a heavy accent (I am clueless about where she was born; her research was OK). Today I learn that she is a year older than Joel. Margalit is Hebrew spelling. 作者: choi 时间: 5-14-2024 14:37
(d) "Simon Kuznets, whose work on measuring output in the U.S. and throughout the world during the Great Depression resulted in the Kuznets curve * * * Peter Drucker famously opined, 'what gets measured gets managed' "
(i) Simon Kuznets
(A) "The modern concept of GDP was first developed by Simon Kuznets for a 1934 US Congress report" en.wikipedia.org for gross domestic product
(B) Simon Kuznets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Kuznets
(1901 – 1985; "was born * * * in Pinsk, Russian Empire, in modern Belarus, to a Lithuanian-Jewish family * * * [at age 17 went to a Russian college to study economics] In 1922, the Kuznets family emigrated to the United States. Kuznets then studied at Columbia University * * * He graduated with a BS in 1923, MA in 1924, and PhD in 1926")
(C) Kuznets curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuznets_curve
(ii) Peter Drucker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Drucker
(table: born in 1909 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, died in 2005 in Claremont, Calif (aged 95); "He is one of the best-known and most widely influential thinkers and writers on the subject of management theory and practice. * * * While in Frankfurt, he also earned a doctorate in international law and public law from the Goethe University Frankfurt in 1931 [aged 22]")
The "aged 95" is British English taught in Taiwan. The counterpart in American English is "age 95."
(e) "Benjamin Friedman's 'The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth' (2005)"