Economic Growth and Productivity

Economic growth and productivity research asks why some economies expand rapidly over decades while others stagnate, tracing the roles of institutions, human capital, and the spread of technology in shaping long-run living standards. Economists in this area use both formal theory and large-scale empirical methods to untangle how factors like educational attainment, research and development investment, and demographic change interact to drive—or constrain—productivity gains across countries and regions. A persistent open question is why technology and best practices diffuse unevenly, leaving substantial gaps between rich and poor economies even when knowledge is nominally accessible to all. Current work is pushing deeper into the quality of institutions and governance as preconditions for growth, as well as into how the demographic transition—the shift from high to low fertility and mortality—reshapes labor supply and capital accumulation over generations.

Works

115,000

Total citations

1,895,807

Keywords

InstitutionsEconomic DevelopmentTechnology DiffusionHuman CapitalProductivity GrowthEducational Attainment