Introduction: Modern Economic and Corporate Growth

Consistent growth of income and of living standards is a feature of modern industrial economies. One of the ’stylised facts’ concerning growth, first discussed by Kaldor in 19611 but equally pertinent today, is that output per worker has continually risen `at a steady trend rate’ over a long period of time and has shown no tendency to decline. This book is concerned with understanding and modelling economic growth. However, unlike much of the economic literature we concentrate on analysing the growth of productivity of the corporation. Just as the productivity of nations has grown consistently, so too has the output per person employed in the typical modern large corporation. But, as at the national level, it is clear that different corporations grow at different rates over fairly long periods of time. This book develops an approach for understanding and modelling the productivity growth of individual corporations.