The Dynamics of Smithian Growth

Morgan Kelly

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1997, vol. 112, issue 3, 939-964

Abstract: This paper analyzes the evolution of an economy where growth is driven by increased specialization caused by the geographical expansion of markets. It proves that such Smithian growth exhibits generic threshold behavior. Below a critical density of transport linkages, the economy is split into isolated local markets with limited specialization. Above the critical density, these markets begin to fuse into a large, economywide market causing growth to accelerate. This allows an explicit test of the consensus among historians of Sung dynasty China that the economic revolution during that period was a result of commercialization caused by the creation of a national waterway network.

Date: 1997
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (75)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1162/003355397555398 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:112:y:1997:i:3:p:939-964.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics is currently edited by Robert J. Barro, Lawrence F. Katz, Nathan Nunn, Andrei Shleifer and Stefanie Stantcheva

More articles in The Quarterly Journal of Economics from President and Fellows of Harvard College
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press (joanna.bergh@oup.com).