Machines And Economic Growth

In 1982, Vaclav Smil turned upside down traditional perceptions of China as a green paradise in "The Bad Earth". Updating and expanding its basic arguments and perceptions, this volume is an inquiry into the fundamental factors, needs, prospects, and limits of modern Chinese society.

The historical record concerning industrialization since 1770 is consistent with the classical view of economic growth, but not with the currently accepted neo-classical growth theory. Flaws in the logic and empirical short-comings of the neo-classical theory suggest that it should be rejected. Specifically, ideas that originate in static concepts cannot be applied to growth, a dynamic process. Nineteenth-century industrialization, the world wars and the Depression, the post-war boom, and the more recent slowdown in growth are discussed.

A timely investigation of the potential economic effects, both realized and unrealized, of artificial intelligence within the United States healthcare system. In sweeping conversations about the impact of artificial intelligence on many sectors of the economy, healthcare has received relatively little attention. Yet it seems unlikely that an industry that represents nearly one-fifth of the economy could escape the efficiency and cost-driven disruptions of AI. The Economics of Artificial Intelligence: Health Care Challenges brings together contributions from health economists, physicians, philosophers, and scholars in law, public health, and machine learning to identify the primary barriers to entry of AI in the healthcare sector. Across original papers and in wide-ranging responses, the contributors analyze barriers of four types: incentives, management, data availability, and regulation. They also suggest that AI has the potential to improve outcomes and lower costs. Understanding both the benefits of and barriers to AI adoption is essential for designing policies that will affect the evolution of the healthcare system.

This book develops a machine-learning framework for predicting economic growth. It can also be considered as a primer for using machine learning (also known as data mining or data analytics) to answer economic questions. While machine learning itself is not a new idea, advances in computing technology combined with a dawning realization of its applicability to economic questions makes it a new tool for economists.

#1 New York Times Bestseller “Significant...The book is both instructive and surprisingly moving.” —The New York Times Ray Dalio, one of the world’s most successful investors and entrepreneurs, shares the unconventional principles that he’s developed, refined, and used over the past forty years to create unique results in both life and business—and which any person or organization can adopt to help achieve their goals. In 1975, Ray Dalio founded an investment firm, Bridgewater Associates, out of his two-bedroom apartment in New York City. Forty years later, Bridgewater has made more money for its clients than any other hedge fund in history and grown into the fifth most important private company in the United States, according to Fortune magazine. Dalio himself has been named to Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Along the way, Dalio discovered a set of unique principles that have led to Bridgewater’s exceptionally effective culture, which he describes as “an idea meritocracy that strives to achieve meaningful work and meaningful relationships through radical transparency.” It is these principles, and not anything special about Dalio—who grew up an ordinary kid in a middle-class Long Island neighborhood—that he believes are the reason behind his success. In Principles, Dalio shares what he’s learned over the course of his remarkable career. He argues that life, management, economics, and investing can all be systemized into rules and understood like machines. The book’s hundreds of practical lessons, which are built around his cornerstones of “radical truth” and “radical transparency,” include Dalio laying out the most effective ways for individuals and organizations to make decisions, approach challenges, and build strong teams. He also describes the innovative tools the firm uses to bring an idea meritocracy to life, such as creating “baseball cards” for all employees that distill their strengths and weaknesses, and employing computerized decision-making systems to make believability-weighted decisions. While the book brims with novel ideas for organizations and institutions, Principles also offers a clear, straightforward approach to decision-making that Dalio believes anyone can apply, no matter what they’re seeking to achieve. Here, from a man who has been called both “the Steve Jobs of investing” and “the philosopher king of the financial universe” (CIO magazine), is a rare opportunity to gain proven advice unlike anything you’ll find in the conventional business press.

Hornborg argues that we are caught in a collective illusion about the nature of modern technology that prevents us from imagining solutions to our economic and environmental crises other than technocratic fixes. He demonstrates how the power of the machine generates increasingly asymmetrical exchanges and distribution of resources and risks between distant populations and ecosystems, and thus an increasingly polarized world order. The author challenges us to reconceptualize the machine—'industrial technomass'—as a species of power and a problem of culture. He shows how economic anthropology has the tools to deconstruct the concepts of production, money capital, and market exchange, and to analyze capital accumulation as a problem at the very interface of the natural and social sciences. His analysis provides an alternative understanding of economic growth and technological development. Hornborg's work is essential for researchers in anthropology, human ecology, economics, political economy, world-systems theory, environmental justice, and science and technology studies. Find out more about the author at the Lund University, Sweden web site.

What has dictated the rate and direction of technological change? How central has it been to industrial progress? How has it related to other determinants of economic growth and development? In Technology and Industrial Progress, Dr von Tunzelmann examines theoretical views on the nature and contribution of technology, and the empirical evidence from the major industrializing countries from the 18th century to the present day. The experiences of countries regarded in their time as the leaders of industrialization - Britain in the 18th century, the United States in the 19th century and Japan in the 20th century - are critically compared by the author. The following chapters study the transfer of each of these patterns of technology and growth to later industrializers, such as continental Europe, the Soviet Union, and today's newly industrializing countries. Adopting approaches drawn from evolutionary economics, Dr von Tunzelmann links micro-level phenomena relating to individual firms and technologies to macro-level outcomes as reflected in economic growth and development. This long-awaited book is exceptional both in the range of countries surveyed and the breadth of topics analysed, encompassing changes in production processes, products and marketing, management and finance.