CHAPTER 1
The Facts of Economic Growth
C.I. Jones
Stanford GSB, Stanford, CA, United States
NBER, Cambridge, MA, United States
Contents
1. Growth at the Frontier 5
1.1 Modern Economic Growth 5
1.2 Growth Over the Very Long Run 7
2. Sources of Frontier Growth 9
2.1 Growth Accounting 9
2.2 Physical Capital 11
2.3 Factor Shares 14
2.4 Human Capital 15
2.5 Ideas 17
2.6 Misallocation 21
2.7 Explaining the Facts of Frontier Growth 22
3. Frontier Growth: Beyond GDP 23
3.1 Structural Change 23
3.2 The Rise of Health 24
3.3 Hours Worked and Leisure 26
3.4 Fertility 27
3.5 Top Inequality 29
3.6 The Price of Natural Resources 30
4. The Spread of Economic Growth 31
4.1 The Long Run 31
4.2 The Spread of Growth in Recent Decades 33
4.3 The Distribution of Income by Person, Not by Country 39
4.4 Beyond GDP 39
4.5 Development Accounting 42
4.6 Understanding TFP Differences 46
4.7 Misallocation: A Theory of TFP 48
4.8 Institutions and the Role of Government 49
4.9 Taxes and Economic Growth 52
4.10 TFPQ vs TFPR 53
4.11 The Hsieh–Klenow Facts 56
4.12 The Diffusion of Ideas 60
4.13 Urbanization 60
5. Conclusion 61
Acknowledgments 62
References 62
Handbook of Macroeconomics, Volume 2A © 2016 Elsevier B.V.
ISSN 1574-0048, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/bs.hesmac.2016.03.002 All rights reserved. 3
,4 Handbook of Macroeconomics
Abstract
Why are people in the richest countries of the world so much richer today than 100 years ago? And why
are some countries so much richer than others? Questions such as these define the field of economic
growth. This paper documents the facts that underlie these questions. How much richer are we today
than 100 years ago, and how large are the income gaps between countries? The purpose of the paper is
to provide an encyclopedia of the fundamental facts of economic growth upon which our theories are
built, gathering them together in one place and updating them with the latest available data.
Keywords
Economic growth, Development, Long-run growth, Productivity
JEL Classification Codes
E01, O10, 04
“[T]he errors which arise from the absence of facts are far more numerous and more durable than
those which result from unsound reasoning respecting true data.”—Charles Babbage, quoted in
(Rosenberg, 1994, p. 27).
“[I]t is quite wrong to try founding a theory on observable magnitudes alone… It is the theory
which decides what we can observe.”—Albert Einstein, quoted in (Heisenberg, 1971, p. 63).
Why are people in the United States, Germany, and Japan so much richer today than 100
or 1000 years ago? Why are people in France and the Netherlands today so much richer
than people in Haiti and Kenya? Questions like these are at the heart of the study of
economic growth.
Economics seeks to answer these questions by building quantitative models—models
that can be compared with empirical data. That is, we’d like our models to tell us not
only that one country will be richer than another, but by how much. Or to explain
not only that we should be richer today than a century ago, but that the growth rate
should be 2% per year rather than 10%. Growth economics has only partially achieved
these goals, but a critical input into our analysis is knowing where the goalposts lie—that
is, knowing the facts of economic growth.
The purpose of this paper is to lay out as many of these facts as possible. Kaldor (1961)
was content with documenting a few key stylized facts that basic growth theory should
hope to explain. Jones and Romer (2010) updated his list to reflect what we’ve learned
over the last 50 years. The approach here is different. Rather than highlighting a handful
of stylized facts, we draw on the last 30 years of the renaissance of growth economics to
lay out what is known empirically about the subject. These facts are updated with the
latest data and gathered together in a single place—potentially useful to newcomers
to the field as well as to experts. The result, I hope, is a fascinating tour of the growth
literature from the perspective of the basic data.
, The Facts of Economic Growth 5
Log scale, chained 2009 dollars
64,000
32,000
16,000 2.0% per year
8000
4000
2000
1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000
Year
Fig. 1 GDP per person in the United States. Source: Data for 1929–2014 are from the U.S. Bureau
of Economic Analysis, NIPA table 7.1. Data before 1929 are spliced from Maddison, A. 2008. Statistics
on world population, GDP and per capita GDP, 1-2006 AD. Downloaded on December 4, 2008 from
http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/.
The paper is divided broadly into two parts. First, I present the facts related to the
growth of the “frontier” over time: what are the growth patterns exhibited by the richest
countries in the world? Second, I focus on the spread of economic growth throughout
the world. To what extent are countries behind the frontier catching up, falling behind,
or staying in place? And what characteristics do countries in these various groups share?
1. GROWTH AT THE FRONTIER
We begin by discussing economic growth at the “frontier.” By this I mean growth
among the richest set of countries in any given time period. For much of the last century,
the United States has served as a stand in for the frontier, and we will follow this tradition.
1.1 Modern Economic Growth
Fig. 1 shows one of the key stylized facts of frontier growth: For nearly 150 years, GDP
per person in the US economy has grown at a remarkably steady average rate of around
2% per year. Starting at around $3,000 in 1870, per capita GDP rose to more than
$50,000 by 2014, a nearly 17-fold increase.
Beyond the large, sustained growth in living standards, several other features of this
graph stand out. One is the significant decline in income associated with the Great
, 6 Handbook of Macroeconomics
Table 1 The stability of US Growth
Period Growth Rate Period Growth Rate
1870–2007 2.03 1973–1995 1.82
1870–1929 1.76 1995–2007 2.13
1929–2007 2.23
1900–1950 2.06 1995–2001 2.55
1950–2007 2.16 2001–2007 1.72
1950–1973 2.50
1973–2007 1.93
Note: Annualized growth rates for the data shown in Fig. 1.
Depression. However, to me this decline stands out most for how anomalous it is. Many
of the other recessions barely make an impression on the eye: over long periods of time,
economic growth swamps economic fluctuations. Moreover, despite the singular sever-
ity of the Great Depression—GDP per person fell by nearly 20% in just 4 years—it is
equally remarkable that the Great Depression was temporary. By 1939, the economy is
already passing its previous peak and the macroeconomic story a decade later is once again
one of sustained, almost relentless, economic growth.
The stability of US growth also merits some discussion. With the aid of the trend line
in Fig. 1, one can see that growth was slightly slower pre-1929 than post. Table 1 makes
this point more precisely. Between 1870 and 1929, growth averaged 1.76%, vs 2.23%
between 1929 and 2007 (using “peak to peak” dates to avoid business cycle problems).
Alternatively, between 1900 and 1950, growth averaged 2.06% vs 2.16% since 1950.
Before one is too quick to conclude that growth rates are increasing; however, notice
that the period since 1950 shows a more mixed pattern, with rapid growth between
1950 and 1973, slower growth between 1973 and 1995, and then rapid growth during
the late 1990s that gives way to slower growth more recently.
The interesting “trees” that one sees in Table 1 serves to support the main point one
gets from looking at the “forest” in Fig. 1: steady, sustained exponential growth for the
last 150 years is a key characteristic of the frontier. All modern theories of economic
growth—for example, Solow (1956), Lucas (1988), Romer (1990), and Aghion and
Howitt (1992)—are designed with this fact in mind.
The sustained growth in Fig. 1 also naturally raises the question of whether such
growth can and will continue for the next century. On the one hand, this fact more than
any other helps justify the focus of many growth models on the balanced growth path,
a situation in which all economic variables grow at constant exponential rates forever.
And the logic of the balanced growth path suggests that the growth can continue indef-
initely. On the other hand, as we will see, there are reasons from other facts and theories
to question this logic.
The Facts of Economic Growth
C.I. Jones
Stanford GSB, Stanford, CA, United States
NBER, Cambridge, MA, United States
Contents
1. Growth at the Frontier 5
1.1 Modern Economic Growth 5
1.2 Growth Over the Very Long Run 7
2. Sources of Frontier Growth 9
2.1 Growth Accounting 9
2.2 Physical Capital 11
2.3 Factor Shares 14
2.4 Human Capital 15
2.5 Ideas 17
2.6 Misallocation 21
2.7 Explaining the Facts of Frontier Growth 22
3. Frontier Growth: Beyond GDP 23
3.1 Structural Change 23
3.2 The Rise of Health 24
3.3 Hours Worked and Leisure 26
3.4 Fertility 27
3.5 Top Inequality 29
3.6 The Price of Natural Resources 30
4. The Spread of Economic Growth 31
4.1 The Long Run 31
4.2 The Spread of Growth in Recent Decades 33
4.3 The Distribution of Income by Person, Not by Country 39
4.4 Beyond GDP 39
4.5 Development Accounting 42
4.6 Understanding TFP Differences 46
4.7 Misallocation: A Theory of TFP 48
4.8 Institutions and the Role of Government 49
4.9 Taxes and Economic Growth 52
4.10 TFPQ vs TFPR 53
4.11 The Hsieh–Klenow Facts 56
4.12 The Diffusion of Ideas 60
4.13 Urbanization 60
5. Conclusion 61
Acknowledgments 62
References 62
Handbook of Macroeconomics, Volume 2A © 2016 Elsevier B.V.
ISSN 1574-0048, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/bs.hesmac.2016.03.002 All rights reserved. 3
,4 Handbook of Macroeconomics
Abstract
Why are people in the richest countries of the world so much richer today than 100 years ago? And why
are some countries so much richer than others? Questions such as these define the field of economic
growth. This paper documents the facts that underlie these questions. How much richer are we today
than 100 years ago, and how large are the income gaps between countries? The purpose of the paper is
to provide an encyclopedia of the fundamental facts of economic growth upon which our theories are
built, gathering them together in one place and updating them with the latest available data.
Keywords
Economic growth, Development, Long-run growth, Productivity
JEL Classification Codes
E01, O10, 04
“[T]he errors which arise from the absence of facts are far more numerous and more durable than
those which result from unsound reasoning respecting true data.”—Charles Babbage, quoted in
(Rosenberg, 1994, p. 27).
“[I]t is quite wrong to try founding a theory on observable magnitudes alone… It is the theory
which decides what we can observe.”—Albert Einstein, quoted in (Heisenberg, 1971, p. 63).
Why are people in the United States, Germany, and Japan so much richer today than 100
or 1000 years ago? Why are people in France and the Netherlands today so much richer
than people in Haiti and Kenya? Questions like these are at the heart of the study of
economic growth.
Economics seeks to answer these questions by building quantitative models—models
that can be compared with empirical data. That is, we’d like our models to tell us not
only that one country will be richer than another, but by how much. Or to explain
not only that we should be richer today than a century ago, but that the growth rate
should be 2% per year rather than 10%. Growth economics has only partially achieved
these goals, but a critical input into our analysis is knowing where the goalposts lie—that
is, knowing the facts of economic growth.
The purpose of this paper is to lay out as many of these facts as possible. Kaldor (1961)
was content with documenting a few key stylized facts that basic growth theory should
hope to explain. Jones and Romer (2010) updated his list to reflect what we’ve learned
over the last 50 years. The approach here is different. Rather than highlighting a handful
of stylized facts, we draw on the last 30 years of the renaissance of growth economics to
lay out what is known empirically about the subject. These facts are updated with the
latest data and gathered together in a single place—potentially useful to newcomers
to the field as well as to experts. The result, I hope, is a fascinating tour of the growth
literature from the perspective of the basic data.
, The Facts of Economic Growth 5
Log scale, chained 2009 dollars
64,000
32,000
16,000 2.0% per year
8000
4000
2000
1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000
Year
Fig. 1 GDP per person in the United States. Source: Data for 1929–2014 are from the U.S. Bureau
of Economic Analysis, NIPA table 7.1. Data before 1929 are spliced from Maddison, A. 2008. Statistics
on world population, GDP and per capita GDP, 1-2006 AD. Downloaded on December 4, 2008 from
http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/.
The paper is divided broadly into two parts. First, I present the facts related to the
growth of the “frontier” over time: what are the growth patterns exhibited by the richest
countries in the world? Second, I focus on the spread of economic growth throughout
the world. To what extent are countries behind the frontier catching up, falling behind,
or staying in place? And what characteristics do countries in these various groups share?
1. GROWTH AT THE FRONTIER
We begin by discussing economic growth at the “frontier.” By this I mean growth
among the richest set of countries in any given time period. For much of the last century,
the United States has served as a stand in for the frontier, and we will follow this tradition.
1.1 Modern Economic Growth
Fig. 1 shows one of the key stylized facts of frontier growth: For nearly 150 years, GDP
per person in the US economy has grown at a remarkably steady average rate of around
2% per year. Starting at around $3,000 in 1870, per capita GDP rose to more than
$50,000 by 2014, a nearly 17-fold increase.
Beyond the large, sustained growth in living standards, several other features of this
graph stand out. One is the significant decline in income associated with the Great
, 6 Handbook of Macroeconomics
Table 1 The stability of US Growth
Period Growth Rate Period Growth Rate
1870–2007 2.03 1973–1995 1.82
1870–1929 1.76 1995–2007 2.13
1929–2007 2.23
1900–1950 2.06 1995–2001 2.55
1950–2007 2.16 2001–2007 1.72
1950–1973 2.50
1973–2007 1.93
Note: Annualized growth rates for the data shown in Fig. 1.
Depression. However, to me this decline stands out most for how anomalous it is. Many
of the other recessions barely make an impression on the eye: over long periods of time,
economic growth swamps economic fluctuations. Moreover, despite the singular sever-
ity of the Great Depression—GDP per person fell by nearly 20% in just 4 years—it is
equally remarkable that the Great Depression was temporary. By 1939, the economy is
already passing its previous peak and the macroeconomic story a decade later is once again
one of sustained, almost relentless, economic growth.
The stability of US growth also merits some discussion. With the aid of the trend line
in Fig. 1, one can see that growth was slightly slower pre-1929 than post. Table 1 makes
this point more precisely. Between 1870 and 1929, growth averaged 1.76%, vs 2.23%
between 1929 and 2007 (using “peak to peak” dates to avoid business cycle problems).
Alternatively, between 1900 and 1950, growth averaged 2.06% vs 2.16% since 1950.
Before one is too quick to conclude that growth rates are increasing; however, notice
that the period since 1950 shows a more mixed pattern, with rapid growth between
1950 and 1973, slower growth between 1973 and 1995, and then rapid growth during
the late 1990s that gives way to slower growth more recently.
The interesting “trees” that one sees in Table 1 serves to support the main point one
gets from looking at the “forest” in Fig. 1: steady, sustained exponential growth for the
last 150 years is a key characteristic of the frontier. All modern theories of economic
growth—for example, Solow (1956), Lucas (1988), Romer (1990), and Aghion and
Howitt (1992)—are designed with this fact in mind.
The sustained growth in Fig. 1 also naturally raises the question of whether such
growth can and will continue for the next century. On the one hand, this fact more than
any other helps justify the focus of many growth models on the balanced growth path,
a situation in which all economic variables grow at constant exponential rates forever.
And the logic of the balanced growth path suggests that the growth can continue indef-
initely. On the other hand, as we will see, there are reasons from other facts and theories
to question this logic.
