The reading list below is based on a reading list originally used for an internal GPI reading group in spring 2021, organized by Phil Trammell and Leopold Aschenbrenner, and on the ETGP 2022 syllabus, also organized by Phil. I also added a few resources I deemed relevant on some of the topics below, but the credit for almost all of these resources goes to Phil and Leopold.

My suggested usage for this reading list is in conjunction with, and as a complement to, the slides for the first week of ETGP 2022 (available here), as the course was specifically designed to teach economic theory in a global prioritization context. As such, the structure of the reading list matches that of the course.

Disclaimer: The views presented in the readings suggested below do not necessarily represent views held by the reading group organizers, me, GPI, or any other GPI staff member.

Motivation

There are two main reasons why growth theory is particularly relevant for EAs. First, growth models allow for a lot of flexibility regarding which factors are included in the model, and which timescale one uses to evaluate the effects of changes in these factors. These characteristics make growth models useful even if one is ultimately only interested in factors other than economic growth, like AI or climate change. Second, economic growth plays a central role in the contemporary world, in a way that understanding its dynamics is likely key for global prioritization.

1. Introduction and basic models

• Jones, Charles I., and Dietrich Vollrath. 2013. Introduction to Economic Growth.
  • Chapter 2, up to section 2.1.4
• Trammell, Philip. 2020. “Economic Growth under Transformative AI.” 
  • Section 2

2. Accumulation-based models and growth versus level effects

• Jones, Charles I., and Dietrich Vollrath. 2013. Introduction to Economic Growth.
  • Chapter 9
• Piketty, Thomas. 2014. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. 
  • Section “Too Much Capital Kills the Return on Capital” up to and including “Capital-Labor Substitution in the Twenty-First Century: An Elasticity Greater Than One”
• Jones, Charles I. 2003. “Growth, Capital Shares, and a New Perspective on Production Functions.”

3. Scale effects in researcher-based models

• Jones, Charles I. 2005. “Growth and Ideas.”
  • Section 1
  • Section 3
  • Section 5 (skip 5.4)
  • Sections 6.1 and 6.2
• Bloom, Nicholas, Charles I. Jones, John Van Reenen, and Michael Webb. 2020. “Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?”
  • Introduction
  • See figures in the slides
• Bond-Smith, Steven. 2019. “The Decades-Long Dispute Over Scale Effects in the Theory of Economic Growth.”

4. Existential risk and growth

• Aschenbrenner, Leopold. 2020. “Existential Risk and Growth.”
• Trammell, Philip. 2021. “Existential Risk and Exogenous Growth.”
• Hilton, Benjamin. 2021. “Existential Risk Mitigation as a Public Good.”
• Hilary Greaves’s lecture on longtermism and economic growth

5. Long-run historical growth

• Kremer, Michael. 1993. “Population Growth and Technological Change: One Million B.C. to 1990.”
• Jones, Charles I. “Economic Growth over the Very Long Run.”
• Roodman, David. 2021. “On the Probability Distribution of Long-Term Changes in the Growth Rate of the Global Economy: An Outside View.”

6. The mechanics of the industrial revolution “phase change”

• Galor, Oded, and David N. Weil. 2000. “Population, Technology, and Growth: From Malthusian Stagnation to the Demographic Transition and Beyond.”
• Crafts, Nicholas. 2011. “Explaining the First Industrial Revolution: Two Views.”

7. AI and growth

• Trammell, Philip. 2020. “Economic Growth under Transformative AI.” 
  • Section 1
  • Sections 3.1-3.3
  • Section 4.1-4.2
  • Section 5.2
  • Section 6
  • Section 7
• Aghion, Philippe, Benjamin F Jones, and Charles I Jones. 2019. “Artificial Intelligence and Economic Growth.”
  • GovAI Presentation
• Davidson, Tom. 2021. “Could Advanced AI Drive Explosive Economic Growth?”

8. Stagnation

• Jones, Charles. 2022. “The End of Economic Growth? Unintended Consequences of a Declining Population.”
  • Video (starting around minute 25)
• Jones, Charles I. 2016. “Life and Growth.”
  • Section I
  • Section II
• Rachel, Łukasz. 2020. “Leisure-Enhancing Technological Change.”
  • Section 1 
  • Section 2, until “Balanced growth preferences with growing M.”

9. Growth and human happiness

• Easterlin, Richard A., and Kelsey O’Connor. 2020. “The Easterlin Paradox.”
• Clark, Andrew E., Paul Frijters, and Michael A. Shields. 2008. “Relative Income, Happiness, and Utility: An Explanation for the Easterlin Paradox and Other Puzzles.”
  • Section 2
  • Section 3.4
  • Section 5.1
• Jones, Charles I., and Peter J. Klenow. 2016. “Beyond GDP? Welfare across Countries and Time.”
  • Introduction
• Klenow, Peter, Charles I. Jones, Mark Bils, and Mohamad Adhami. 2022. “Population and Welfare: The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number.”

10. Inequality and growth

• Bénabou, Roland. 1996. “Inequality and Growth.”
• Jones, Charles I. 2022. “Taxing Top Incomes in a World of Ideas.”
• Stiglitz, Joseph E. 2016. “Inequality and Economic Growth.”