Productivity, Technology and Economic Growth presents a
selection of recent research advances on long term economic growth.
While the contributions stem from both economic history, macro- and
microeconomics and the economics of innovation, all papers depart from
a common viewpoint: the key factor behind long term growth is
productivity, and the latter is primarily driven by technological
change. Most contributions show implicitly or explicitly that
technological change is at least partly dependent on growth itself.
Furthermore, technology appears to interact strongly with investment
in physical and human capital as well as with changes in historical,
political and institutional settings.

Together these papers are an up-to-date account of the remarkable
convergence in theoretical and empirical work on productivity and
growth over the past decades. The first part deals with the
characteristics of growth regimes over longer periods, ranging from 20
years to two centuries. The next four chapters study the determinants
of productivity growth and, in some cases, productivity slowdown
during the last quarter of the twentieth century. The final five
chapters focus on the role of technology and innovation as the key
determinants of growth. Productivity, Technology and Economic
Growth is, therefore, a welcome collection for academic scholars
and graduate students in economics, history and related social
sciences as well as for policy makers.