90-756, Technology and Economic Growth
12 units
Prerequisites: None
Delivery Format: On-Campus
Description: "The consequences for human welfare involved in questions like these [about economic growth] are simply staggering: Once one starts to think about them, it is hard to think about anything else." -- Robert E. Lucas, Nobel Laureate in Economics This course will examine the following central questions: Why are some nations so much richer than others? The gap in per capita income between the world’s richest and poorest nations is enormous, and it has actually grown larger in the postwar period. Per capita income in the United States is more than 40 times higher than per capita income in Ethiopia. Why are we so rich and they so poor? Why have some nations been able to close the gap? A small number of developing countries have been able to effectively close the gap in per capita incomes with the industrialized West. First Japan, then Taiwan and South Korea, and, more recently, India and China, have successfully accelerated their economic growth rates. How was this done? Can other countries do the same thing? What is the engine of economic growth in the long run? Economic research has clearly identified innovation as the engine of economic growth in the long run. How does the innovation process work? And how does this contribute to economic growth? The course will be taught by two accomplished and highly rated members of the CMU faculty, Ashish Arora and Lee Branstetter. For further details, including a course syllabus, go to http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/bio/faculty/ashish.html, http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/bio/faculty/branstet.html
Professor at Carnegie Mellon, 1963-1974
Last modified on August 24, 2007
