Productivity Limits

David Goalstone

Chapter 5 in Macrofoundations of Political Economy and Development, 2007, pp 45-52 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract What factors are necessary for a particular kind of society to exist, survive, and reach full maturity? To get some hints let us turn to history of economic thought. In the Wealth of Nations Smith says a society’s ‘full complement of riches’ is determined by ‘the nature of its laws and institutions’ as well as ‘the nature of its soil and climate, and its situation with respect to other countries’. In a ‘fully peopled’ competitive society, this implies to Smith low wages, low profits, and low rates of interest. One can jump from here to the Ricardian conclusion that only the landlord would appear to prosper. One can get a sense of hitting an upper productivity limit—thus spelling the end of progress.

Keywords: Labor Productivity; Productivity Limit; Great Infrastructure; Modern Capitalism; Planning Office (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:pal:palchp:978-0-230-60431-5_5

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9780230604315

DOI: 10.1057/9780230604315_5

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().