The Digital Era, Viewed From a Perspective of Millennia of Economic Growth

Jakub Growiec

No 2018-034, KAE Working Papers from Warsaw School of Economics, Collegium of Economic Analysis

Abstract: I propose a synthetic theory of economic growth and technological progressover the entire human history. Based on this theory as well as on the analogieswith three previous eras (the hunter-gatherer era, the agricultural era and theindustrial era) and the technological revolutions which initiated them, I drawconclusions for the contemporary digital era. I argue that each opening of anew era adds a new, previously inactive dimension of economic development,and redefines the key inputs and output of the production process. Economicgrowth accelerates across the consecutive eras, but there are also big shifts infactor shares and inequality. The two key inputs to the digital-era productionprocess are hardware and software. Human skilled labor is complementary tohardware and substitutable with software, which increasingly includes sophisticatedartificial intelligence (AI) technologies. I also argue that economistshave not yet designed sufficient measurement tools, economic policies and institutionsappropriate for the digital-era economy

Keywords: economic growth; technological progress; unified growth theory; digital economy; artificial intelligence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O10 O30 O40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 52 pages
Date: 2018-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-big, nep-gro, nep-hpe and nep-ict
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sgh:kaewps:2018034

DOI: 10.33119/kaewps2018034

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