Introduction: structural dynamics and contemporary growth theory

The essays collected in this volume address the role of structural dynamics in the context of the current state of the theory of economic growth. Given the many extensions and ramifications of contemporary growth theory, it would seem far too ambitious an undertaking, within the space of an introductory essay, to attempt a comprehensive survey. Instead, our more modest purpose here is to draw attention specifically to developments in the study of structural dynamics. Over the past four or five decades, the theory of economic growth has made enormous progress. Much as in other fields of scientific enquiry, this progress tends to take the form of cumulative knowledge acquisition and formation clustered around a few lines of research. Even so – and notwithstanding the emergence of an overarching and powerful analytical framework – other less well-explored lines of research tend to survive and coexist. In their introduction to the Handbook of Economic Growth (2005, p. xi), Aghion and Durlauf note that ‘interest in economic growth has been an integral part of economics since its inception as a scholarly discipline’. In fact, one of the few undisputed facts in the history of the discipline is perhaps that what is at the heart of political economy through the Modern Age (sixteenth to eighteenth centuries) is a focus on aggregate wealth. Defining the nature of wealth, as well as suggesting ways to increase aggregate wealth and to improve its quality, is foremost among the questions addressed by the political economy of the modern age.