The Origins of Economic Growth

This book deals with factors affecting economic growth in knowledge-based societies. It is shown that the interaction between material and nonmaterial values is the ultimate source of all economic growth including business cycles. The model developed predicts the quantitative facts concerning the business cycles better than the conventional real-cycle models. It also produces, besides the balanced-growth path, another growth path whose existence is verified by empirical facts. The results give strong evidence of the economic relevance of nonmaterial values. They also prompt a new vision of the stochastic elements in the business cycles. Nonmaterial values are analysed, and their interaction with economic growth is also illustrated in terms of an entropy formalism of historical analysis.

Inhalt
1 An Introduction to Nonmaterial Values.- I. Knowledge as the Basic Nonmaterial Value of the Supply Side.- II. Nonmaterial Values of the Demand Side.- 2 The Interaction of Material and Nonmaterial Values as the Source of Economic Growth and Business Cycles.- III. A Necessary Extension of Economics.- IV. The Mathematical Tools.- V. The Lucasian Mechanics of Economic Development and Its Extension to Nonmaterial Values.- VI. The Fundamental Dynamics of Economic Growth and the Business Cycles.- VII. The Basic Business Cycles as the Causal Part of the Business Cycles.- VIII. The Growth Effects of Nonmaterial Values and the Trade-Off between Growth and Stability.- IX. An Alternative Vision of the Stochastic Element in the Business Cycles.- 3 The Historical Interaction between Economic Development and Nonmaterial Values.- X. Human Actor.- XI. Cybernetic Entropy Laws of Actor-Systems.- XII. The Entropy Laws of Individual Freedom.- XIII. World History Revisited in View of the Entropy Laws.