Robert Solow on Growth and the State of Economics

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4.7 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 27 October 2014

⏱️ 62 minutes

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Summary

Robert Solow, Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Nobel Laureate, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about his hugely influential theory of growth and inspiration to create a model that better reflected the stable long-term growth of an economy. Solow contends that capital accumulation cannot explain a significant portion of the economic growth we see. He makes a critical distinction between innovation and technology, and then discusses his views on Milton Friedman and John M. Keynes.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.
0:06.4	I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
0:11.0	Our website is econtalk.org where you can subscribe, comment on this podcast, and find links
0:16.3	and other information related to today's conversation.
0:19.0	You'll also find our archives where you can listen to every episode we've ever done going
0:23.3	back to 2006.
0:25.4	Our email address is mailadycontalk.org.
0:27.9	We'd love to hear from you.
0:32.3	Today is September 29, 2014, and my guest is Robert Solo.
0:37.7	He is Professor Emeritus at MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has been
0:43.3	a professor since 1949, which I find very impressive.
0:48.8	Equally impressive, he received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1987.
0:54.0	Professor Solo, welcome to Econ Talk.
0:56.7	Thank you, Glaya, to be here.
0:58.9	You're often credited with launching growth theory, claim you modestly dismiss, but talk
1:05.4	about your papers a long time ago in the 1950s that at least launched, if not growth theory,
1:10.7	your contributions to that theory.
1:12.4	What were you trying to achieve and what can we learn from that work?
1:16.3	Well, I think the thing to remember, if anyone can remember that far back, is that in
1:23.7	the aftermath of the Second World War, questions about growth in various parts of the world
1:35.7	were in everybody's mind.
1:38.2	Now some of that became talk about economic development, and I, as a young economist,
	...

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