Theorists of Economic Growth from David Hume to the Present

"In the 1950s and since, by far the most frequent reference in discussion of economic development has been to Rostow's stages of growth. Now in this wide-ranging survey of development thought Professor Rostow deals brilliantly with the whole flow of ideas on this subject. No one in the future will be fully informed on economic development who has not read this book."--John Kenneth Galbraith, Harvard University "This is the rich and illuminating work we expect from the pen of Professor Rostow, as one of the persons most knowledgeable about both economic growth and the history of economic ideas. No one who works in these fields can afford to overlook this book."--William J. Baumol, Director, C.V. Starr Center for Applied Economics "Rostow's new book is a delight: panoramic, rich, lucid, and enlivened by humor (a quality for which the 'dismal science' is not especially noted)....His book is a major publication in the history of economic thought."--Finance & Development "The book fills a great gap in the history of economic thought for the 1870-1939 period....Students and staff will welcome this magisterial tome."--he Economic Journal "A master economic historian at work. Rostow's new book is learned, imaginative, and extremely useful."--Henry Rosovksy, Harvard University "In the 1950s and since, by far the most frequent reference in discussion of economic development has been to Rostow's stages of growth. Now in this wide-ranging survey of development thought Professor Rostow deals brilliantly with the whole flow of ideas on this subject. No one in the future will be fully informed on economic development who has not read this book."--John Kenneth Galbraith, Harvard University "This is the rich and illuminating work we expect from the pen of Professor Rostow, as one of the persons most knowledgeable about both economic growth and the history of economic ideas. No one who works in these fields can afford to overlook this book."--William J. Baumol, Director, C.V. Starr Center for Applied Economics "Rostow's new book is a delight: panoramic, rich, lucid, and enlivened by humor (a quality for which the 'dismal science' is not especially noted)....His book is a major publication in the history of economic thought."--Finance & Development "The book fills a great gap in the history of economic thought for the 1870-1939 period....Students and staff will welcome this magisterial tome."--he Economic Journal "A master economic historian at work. Rostow's new book is learned, imaginative, and extremely useful."--Henry Rosovksy, Harvard University "A prodigious accomplishment: Rostow has traced the course of thought on economic development from Hume, Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, Marx, et al. through the interwar and postwar period of Kaldor, Keynes, Kondratieff, Kuznets, etc. to the present age of Chenery, Hirschman, Lewis, and himself, complete as to the last, even with a rendering in mathematics. The work is scholarly, with copious quotations from originals and 150 pages of footnotes, but is easily accessible, written in Rostow's spritely style. It will be with us for a long time."--Charles P. Kindleberger, MIT "The nature and causes of economic growth have fascinated economists from the beginning of the subject. It is exciting to have the panorama surveyed from a consistent point of view by a sage student of the growth process itself. This is intellectual history in the grand manner: reflective, opinionated, and stimulating."--Robert M. Solow, MIT "This book should be on the shelf of every economist and economic historian. I picked it up and found it a gold mine."--David Landes, Harvard University "This is a definitive study of economic growth by our leading economic historian. It discusses theories of growth by the leading classical economists who took the explanation of growth as the central problem of economic analysis, through the period of 1870 through 1940 when only Marshall and Schumpeter took growth seriously, to the period to date when growth models proliferated. He concludes with his own explanation of growth and a look into the twentieth century."--Edward S. Mason, Harvard University "A masterly summation of two centuries of thought on economic growth. Rostow parades the famous and the not-so-famous on their intellectual pilgrimage and offers us a lucid and enjoyable commentary from a definite point of view. The book is worth reading for the quotations alone."--Sir Alexander Cairncross, University of Glasgow and Oxford University "Walt Rostow's survey of the history of economic development thought makes a unique and important contribution. This is the first survey of writers on development that covers the two century spectrum from Hume and Smith to Kuznets and Lewis. In addition to presenting the ideas of each economists, Rostow relates what each says to the economic history of the period in which they wrote. It is an important work accessible to most teachers and students of development."--Dwight H. Perkins, Director, Harvard Institute for International Development "A new resource book of life-long learning, great erudition, and judicious judgement....Rostow's six growth variables and his unique method of weaving them together into an exploratory framework provide the educated public with a volume which both enlightens and edifies."--Journal of Evolutionary Economics "This is a spacious study of the grand theme of economics--the dynamics of economic growth....A majestic treatment of the theories of economic growth over the past two and a half centuries, their relation to economic history, and their implications for the future of the world economy, of political economy, and of public policy."--Economic Development and Cultural Change "[A] tour de force."--Choice