These three volumes include 46 articles which together provide a history of empirical evidence on growth. It consists of six parts dealing with pioneers in measuring growth, international comparisons of income, output and expenditure, growth accounting and productivity, convergence and divergence, agricultural development and industrialization, and capital and technical change. In the selection of articles there has been a strong emphasis on long run growth and on major scholars such as Abramovitz, Chenery, Clark, Crafts, Denison, Kendrick, Kravis, Kuznets and Maddison. They are intended to give a balanced representation of the main issues in each subfield, and to provide a reasonable account of the evolution of the empirical literature on growth.

Productivity, Technology and Economic Growth presents a selection of recent research advances on long term economic growth. While the contributions stem from both economic history, macro- and microeconomics and the economics of innovation, all papers depart from a common viewpoint: the key factor behind long term growth is productivity, and the latter is primarily driven by technological change. Most contributions show implicitly or explicitly that technological change is at least partly dependent on growth itself. Furthermore, technology appears to interact strongly with investment in physical and human capital as well as with changes in historical, political and institutional settings. Together these papers are an up-to-date account of the remarkable convergence in theoretical and empirical work on productivity and growth over the past decades. The first part deals with the characteristics of growth regimes over longer periods, ranging from 20 years to two centuries. The next four chapters study the determinants of productivity growth and, in some cases, productivity slowdown during the last quarter of the twentieth century. The final five chapters focus on the role of technology and innovation as the key determinants of growth. Productivity, Technology and Economic Growth is, therefore, a welcome collection for academic scholars and graduate students in economics, history and related social sciences as well as for policy makers.

Interest in growth theory has reawakened since the middle of the 1980s, but it is some time since a comparative exercise has been carried out. This volume explores the catch-up and convergence evidence of European growth on a cross-sectional basis, armed not only with alternative theoretical ideas, but also with the empirical evidence since 1950 on which to draw. Individual chapters cover macroeconomic accounts, national accounts by industry, measures of fixed capital stocks, technology indicators, human capital, total factor productivity and changes in trend rates of growth, and each assesses the pitfalls, benefits and implications of the methods used. The result is an authoritative quantitative account of the dimensions of European economic growth within an explicitly internationally comparative framework.

Why has European growth slowed down since the 1990s while American productivity growth has speeded up? This book provides a thorough and detailed analysis of the sources of growth from a comparative industry perspective. It argues that Europe's slow growth is the combined result of a severe productivity slowdown in traditional manufacturing and other goods production, and a concomitant failure to invest in and reap the benefits from Information and Communications Technology (ICT), in particular in market services. The analysis is based on rich new databases including the EU KLEMS growth accounting database and provides detailed background of the data construction. As such, the book provides new methodological perspectives and serves as a primer on the use of data in economic growth analysis. More generally, it illustrates to the research and policy community the benefits of analysis based on detailed data on the sources of economic growth.

Interest in growth theory has reawakened since the middle of the 1980s, but it is some time since a comparative exercise has been carried out. This volume explores the catch-up and convergence evidence of European growth on a cross-sectional basis, armed not only with alternative theoretical ideas, but also with the empirical evidence since 1950 on which to draw. Individual chapters cover macroeconomic accounts, national accounts by industry, measures of fixed capital stocks, technology indicators, human capital, total factor productivity and changes in trend rates of growth, and each assesses the pitfalls, benefits and implications of the methods used. The result is an authoritative quantitative account of the dimensions of European economic growth within an explicitly internationally comparative framework.

Why has European growth slowed down since the 1990s while American productivity growth has speeded up? This book provides a thorough and detailed analysis of the sources of growth from a comparative industry perspective. It argues that Europe's slow growth is the combined result of a severe productivity slowdown in traditional manufacturing and other goods production, and a concomitant failure to invest in and reap the benefits from Information and Communications Technology (ICT), in particular in market services. The analysis is based on rich new databases including the EU KLEMS growth accounting database and provides detailed background of the data construction. As such, the book provides new methodological perspectives and serves as a primer on the use of data in economic growth analysis. More generally, it illustrates to the research and policy community the benefits of analysis based on detailed data on the sources of economic growth.

Not only is this excellent collection of papers a fitting tribute to Angus Maddison, it is also a great resource for thinking about future patterns of global economic growth - both in the BRICS and the OECD - based on key insights from historical experience.' - Nicholas Crafts, University of Warwick, UK'Angus Maddison may no longer be with us, but his spirit is very much alive. This collection of essays - including one by Maddison himself - shows how the methods he pioneered continue to shed new light on the comparative performance of nations and inspire successive generations of scholars.' - Barry Eichengreen, University of California at Berkeley, US 'The distinguished editors, leading authorities in the field of comparative quantitative economic development, have gathered a stellar group of authors to address arguably the most challenging question of our time: understanding development dynamics over time and across countries. They are to be congratulated for this comprehensive, stimulating and insightful volume. It is a fitting tribute to the late Angus Maddison, an intellectual giant in the study of long-term economic development, to whom the book is dedicated.' - Hal Hill, Australian National University World economic performance over the last 50 years has been spectacular. The postwar period has witnessed impressive growth rates in Western Europe and Japan, and in recent times China and India. This new book discusses these issues and tackles topical questions such as; what are the socio-economic and institutional factors that have contributed to this impressive performance? Will China and India continue to grow at the same rate over the next two decades? What are the prospects for Japan, the US and other advanced economies? The book brings together contributions by eminent scholars including the late Angus Maddison, Professors Justin Lin, Bob Gordon, Ross Garnaut, Bart van Ark and others to provide answers to these fascinating questions. The chapters analyse the economic performance of selected countries including China, India, Japan, Indonesia and the US, as well as Western Europe, Latin America and developing countries as a group. The time period of the study is from 1850 to the present and includes forecasts to 2030. This well-documented book will be of considerable interest to development economists and country specialists working on countries such as China and India, economic historians who are interested in explaining the growth performance of countries, economists and economic statisticians who are interested in the measurement issues, and international organizations such as the OECD, World Bank and the UN. General readers and non-specialists who are interested in the world economic performance will also find much to interest them in this book. Contributors include: D. Blades, K. Fukao, R. Garnaut, R.J. Gordon, A.A. Hofman, D. Lal, A. Maddison, S. Menshikov, M. O'Mahony, D.S.P. Rao, O. Saito, A. Szirmai, M.P. Timmer, B. van Ark, P. van der Eng, F. Villarreal, H.X. Wu, J. Yifu Lin