Long-Run Economic Growth

One of the primary goals of most national governments is to achieve sustainable growth of real income per person (hereafter economic growth), in the belief that it can help raise the economic well-being of the population as a whole. This widespread concern has been paralleled with the explosion of research on growth in the last decade. The macroeconomics of growth is concerned with questions such as: Why do growth rates differ over time in a given country? Do countries then become more similar in terms of income and productivity growth? Can growth rates be improved by designing economic policies? Answers to such questions are of obvious importance. We have put together a set of papers by distinguished growth researchers in order to survey the state of empirical work in this area.