Society is faced with a profound dilemma. To resist growth is to risk economic and social collapse. To pursue it relentlessly is to endanger the ecosystems on which we depend for long-term survival. For the most part, this dilemma goes unrecognised in mainstream policy. It’s only marginally more visible as a public debate. When reality begins to impinge on the collective consciousness, the best suggestion to hand is that we can somehow ‘decouple’ growth from its material impacts. And continue to do so while the economy expands exponentially.

Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah, or Introduction to History, contains some of the earliest consideration of the impact of economic factors on the course of human history. This makes it an illuminating source of reference when considering the future growth of economics.

Over the last two decades, the Human Development Index has gained tremendous popularity, challenging the notion that economic growth indicators alone can univocally account for human development. But is the use of a composite index better than several independent measures of human development?

Francesco Caselli is professor for economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science and the Director of the Macroeconomics Program of their Center for Economic Performance (CEP). He talked with The Transatlantic about the idea of a National resource curse, about the construction of appropriate economic models and many other issues.

The People’s Republic of China emerging as the world’s second largest economy has shifted a longstanding paradigm of global economic superpowers. However, there is alarm that China’s runaway growth can overheat its economy. What can China do to ensure healthy, long term, positive growth?

Construction implies growth. It seems that the object of constructing new economic theories is to achieve epistemological growth of economic knowledge; can this be achieved given the evolution of economic knowledge? Perhaps a modified Kuhnian approach to the epistemology of economics is the answer.

Xavier Sala-i-Martin is Professor of Economics at Columbia University. He is a senior advisor to the World Economic Forum and author of the World Competitiveness Report, as well as founder and president of the non-profit organizations Umbele Foundation and CEOs Without Borders. He talks with The Transatlantic about his definition of growth, the Easterlin paradox and the need for growth in order to eradicate poverty.

In Economic Growth, Robert Barro and Xavier Sala-i-Martin (Barro et al. 2004) declare: “Economic growth […] is the part of macroeconomics that really matters.” (Ibid., p. 6) It is not an exaggeration – for centuries, economists have extolled the importance of growth. But what conditions have sustained its prestige in economics for so long? Surely any science, and its constituent ideas, must be questioned to maintain rigor. As the following survey reveals, the history of criticism of economic growth within the field is a checkered one.

We dedicate this new issue of The Transatlantic to GROWTH – a topic ubiquitous and controversial on almost all dimensions. Although most economists take growth to mean an increase in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), there is much dispute about its causes, effects and hence desirability. Especially in the wake of the crisis, the growth debate has once again been reignited.
In 2009 Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen and Jean-Paul Fitoussi released a noteworthy report, criticizing and reevaluating the use of GDP as a measurement of economic performance and social progress. They concluded …