Learning from Learning by Doing: Lessons for Economic Growth (Kenneth J. Arrow Lectures Series) - Hardcover

Solow, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0804728402 ISBN 13: 9780804728409

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 1997

Synopsis

Nobel laureate Solow shows how Kenneth J. Arrow's classic paper "The Economic Implications of Learning by Doing" fits into the modern theory of economic growth, and uses it as a springboard for a critical consideration of spectacular recent developments that have made growth theory a dynamic topic today.

About this title

Synopsis:

This book by a Nobel laureate in economics begins with a brief exposition of Kenneth J. Arrow's classic paper The Economic Implications of Learning by Doing (1962). It shows how Arrow's idea fits into the modern theory of economic growth, and uses it as a springboard for a critical consideration of spectacular recent developments that have made growth theory a dynamic topic today. The author then develops a new theory that combines learning by doing (identifying it with the concept of continuous improvement) with a separate process of discrete innovations. Learning by doing leads to a fairly smooth reduction in labor required per unit of output, tied to the rate of gross investment in new capital equipment. Innovations arrive at random; when one of them happens, the labor requirement takes a jump downward.

About the Author:

Robert M. Solow is Emeritus Institute Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of several books, most recently A Critical Essay in Modern Macroeconomic Theory (with F. Hahn).

About this edition

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0804728402
• ISBN 13: 9780804728409
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 108