Dynamism

“A fresh breath of air to stale debates about how to restore long-term growth in advanced economies… Phelps’s perspective is a necessary complement to the standard intellectual frameworks that tend to guide policy thinking around innovation and productivity growth… His iconoclasm shows by example how economics can benefit from an open-mindedness to broader social thinking.”—Martin Sandbu, Financial Times

“This book should be read by anyone interested in innovation. Ned Phelps, who is renowned for his original thinking and rigor, together with his colleagues, provide profound analytic insights which reveal the sources of dynamism across countries and time.”—Ian Goldin, Professor of Globalisation and Development, University of Oxford, and coauthor of Age of Discovery

“In this important book, Edmund Phelps, along with Raicho Bojilov, Hian Teck Hoon, and Gylfi Zoega, push economics back to its roots of understanding human satisfaction and flourishing. Linking satisfaction to innovation, they highlight entrepreneurship as commercializing the technological frontier. The ultimate payoff of this activity is dynamism, the flywheel of continuous innovation and the engine of mass flourishing. From this magisterial framing the authors tackle case studies of innovation globally, going from careful modeling if growth to reassurances about the effects of robots on our lives. This is a must-read book for any serious student of the economy’s—and our own human—potential.”—Glenn Hubbard, Dean Emeritus and Russell L. Carson Professor of Economics and Finance (Graduate School of Business) and Professor of Economics (Arts and Sciences), Columbia University

“Edmund Phelps and his colleagues have further developed his previous work on the sources of a nation’s economic dynamism by delving deeply into the idea of human flourishing. Their findings on the central role of daily work, the knowledge we acquire from doing it, and the innovations we inevitably bring to it are utterly convincing. The authors’ tracing of economic dynamism to the worth people place on their own craftsmanship (there is no better expression for it) is social science at its most sublime.”—Partha Dasgupta, Frank Ramsey Professor Emeritus of Economics, University of Cambridge, and author of Time and the Generations: Population Ethics for a Diminishing Planet

“Over the years, Edmund Phelps has developed a deep and important theory explaining why productivity growth in the U.S. increased dramatically in the nineteenth century and has declined in recent decades. This book puts the theory to the empirical test. It is essential reading for those who care about the past and future of capitalism.”—Eric Maskin, Harvard University, Nobel Laureate in Economics