The Past and Future of Economic Growth: A Semi-Endogenous Perspective

Charles Jones

No 29126, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The nonrivalry of ideas gives rise to increasing returns, a fact celebrated in Paul Romer's recent Nobel Prize. An implication is that the long-run rate of economic growth is the product of the degree of increasing returns and the growth rate of research effort; this is the essence of semi-endogenous growth theory. This paper interprets past and future growth from a semi-endogenous perspective. For 50+ years, U.S. growth has substantially exceeded its long-run rate because of rising educational attainment, declining misallocation, and rising (global) research intensity, implying that frontier growth could slow markedly in the future. Other forces push in the opposite direction. First is the prospect of "finding new Einsteins": how many talented researchers have we missed historically because of the underdevelopment of China and India and because of barriers that discouraged women inventors? Second is the longer-term prospect that artificial intelligence could augment or even replace people as researchers. Throughout, the paper highlights many opportunities for further research.

JEL-codes: E0 O4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cwa, nep-gro, nep-his, nep-ino, nep-isf, nep-mac and nep-ore
Note: EFG PR
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Published as Charles I. Jones, 2022. "The Past and Future of Economic Growth: A Semi-Endogenous Perspective," Annual Review of Economics, vol 14(1).

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w29126.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Past and Future of Economic Growth: A Semi-Endogenous Perspective (2022)
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:nbr:nberwo:29126

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w29126

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by (wpc@nber.org).