Abstract
Abstract. Galor discovered many mysteries of the growth process. He lists them in his Unified Growth Theory and wonders how they can be explained. Close inspection of his mysteries reveals that they are of his own creation. They do not exist. One of his claimed mysteries is the mystery of the alleged sudden spurt in the growth rate of income per capita and in the growth of population. This sudden spurt never happened. Precisely the same data, which were used in support of the Unified Growth Theory are in fact in its direct contradiction. They show that the created mysteries of growth do not exist. The difference between the diametrically opposite conclusions is that in order to support the Unified Growth Theory and to create the mysteries of growth data were appropriately manipulated and distorted but the contradicting evidence is based on their rigorous analysis. The mechanism of the historical economic growth and of the growth of human population is yet to be explained but it would be unproductive to try to look for explanations in the Unified Growth Theory. However, the problem is much deeper than just the examination of this theory. Demographic Growth Theory is based on the incorrect but deeply entrenched postulates developed by accretion over many years and now generally accepted in the economic and demographic research, postulates revolving around the concept of Malthusian stagnation and around a transition from stagnation to growth. The study presented here and earlier similar publications show that these postulates need to be replaced by interpretations based on the mathematical analysis of data and on the correct understanding of hyperbolic distributions.
Keywords. Economic growth, Population growth, Growth rates, Gross Domestic Product, Income per capita, Unified Growth Theory, Hyperbolic growth
JEL.A10, A12, C02, C12, C50, F01, Y80.
References
Ashraf, Q.H. (2009). Essays on Deep Determinants of Comparative Economic Development. Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Economics, Brown University, Providence.
Biraben, J-N. (1980). An Essay Concerning Mankind's Evolution. Population, Selected Papers, December.
Clark, C. (1968). Population Growth and Land Use. New York, NY: St Martin's Press.
Cook, R.C. (1960). World population growth. Law and Contemporary Problems, 25(3), 379-388.
Durand, J. (1967). A Long-range view of world population growth. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science: World Population, 369, 1-8.
Durand, J.D. (1974). Historical Estimates of World Population: An Evaluation. Analytical and Technical Reports, Number 10. University of Pennsylvania, Population Center.
Durand, J. (1977). Historical estimates of world population: An evaluation. Population and Development Review, 3(3), 256.
Floud, D. & McCloskey, D.N. (1994). The Economic History of Britain since 1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gallant, R.A. (1990). The Peopling of Planet Earth: Human Growth through the Ages. New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing Company.
Galor, O. (2005a). From stagnation to growth: Unified Growth Theory. In P. Aghion& S. Durlauf (Eds.), Handbook of Economic Growth (pp. 171-293). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Galor, O. (2005b). The Demographic Transition and the Emergence of Sustained Economic Growth. Journal of the European Economic Association, 3, 494-504. doi. 10.1162/jeea.2005.3.2-3.494
Galor, O. (2007). Multiple Growth Regimes—Insights from Unified Growth Theory. Journal of Macroeconomics, 29(3), 470-475. doi. 10.1016/j.jmacro.2007.06.007
Galor, O. (2008a). Comparative Economic Development: Insight from Unified Growth Theory. [Retrieved from].
Galor, O. (2008b). Economic Growth in the Very Long Run. In: Durlauf, S.N. & Blume, L.E., Eds., The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. doi. 10.1057/9780230226203.0434
Galor, O. (2008c). Comparative Economic Development: Insight from Unified Growth Theory. [Retrieved from].
Galor, O. (2010). The 2008 Lawrence R. Klein Lecture—Comparative Economic Development: Insights from Unified Growth Theory. International Economic Review, 51(1), 1-44. doi. 10.1111/j.1468-2354.2009.00569.x
Galor, O. (2011). Unified Growth Theory. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Galor, O. (2012a). Unified Growth Theory and Comparative Economic Development. [Retrieved from].
Galor, O. (2012b). The Demographic Transition: Causes and Consequences. Cliometrica, 6(1), 1-28. doi. 10.1007/s11698-011-0062-7
Galor, O. (2012c). Unified Growth Theory and Comparative Economic Development. [Retrieved from].
Galor, O. & Moav, O. (2002). Natural Selection and the Origin of Economic Growth. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 117(4), 1133-1191. doi. 10.1162/003355302320935007
Haub, C. (1995). How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth? Population Today, February.
Kapitza, S. P. (2006). Global population blow-up and after. Hamburg: Global Marshall Plan Initiative.
Kremer, M. (1993). Population Growth and Technological Change: One Million B.C. to 1990. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 108(3), 681–716. doi. 10.2307/2118405
Kurzweil, R. (1999). The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence. New York: Penguin.
Livi-Bacci, M. (1997).A Concise History of World Population (2nd ed.). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Maddison, A. (2001). The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective. Paris: OECD.
Maddison, A. (2010). Historical Statistics of the World Economy: 1-2008 AD. [Retrieved from].
McEvedy, C. & Jones, R. (1978). Atlas of World Population History. Middlesex, England: Penguin.
Nielsen, R.W. (2014). Changing the Paradigm.Applied Mathematics, 5, 1950-1963. doi. 10.4236/am.2014.513188
Nielsen, R.W. (2015a). Unified Growth Theory Contradicted by the GDP/cap Data. [Retrieved from].
Nielsen, R.W. (2016a). Mathematical analysis of the historical economic growth with a search for takeoffs from stagnation to growth. Journal of Economic Library, 3(1), 1-23.
Nielsen, R.W. (2016b). Growth of the world population in the past 12,000 years and its link to the economic growth. Journal of Economics Bibliography, 3(1), 1-12.
Nielsen, R.W. (2016c). The postulate of the three regimes of economic growth contradicted by data. Journal of Economic and Social Thought, 3(1), 1-34.
Nielsen, R.W. (2016d). Unified Growth Theory contradicted by the absence of takeoffs in the Gross Domestic Product. Turkish Economic Review, 3(1), 16-27.
Nielsen, R.W. (2016e). Demographic Transition Theory and its link to the historical economic growth. Journal of Economic and Political Economy, 3(1), 32-49.
Podlazov, A.V. (2002). Theoretical demography: Models of population growth and global demographic transition (in Russian). In Advances in Synergetics: The Outlook for the Third Millennium (pp. 324–345). Moscow: Nauka.
Shklovskii, J.S. (1962). The universe, life and mind, (in Russian). Moscow: Academy of Science, USSR.
Shklovskii, J.S. (2002). The universe life and mind (5th edn.). John Wiley and Sons, Ltd, New York, US.
Snowdon, B. & Galor, O. (2008).Towards a Unified Theory of Economic Growth. World Economics, 9, 97-151.
Taeuber, C. & Taeuber, I.B. (1949).World Population Trends. Journal of Farm Economics, 31(1), 241.
Thomlinson, R. (1975). Demographic Problems, Controversy Over Population Control (2nd ed.). Encino, Ca.:Dickenson Pub.
Trager, J. (1994). The People's Chronology: A Year-by-Year Record of Human Events from Prehistory to the Present. New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company.
von Foerster, H., Mora, P., &Amiot, L. (1960). Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026. Science, 132, 1291-1295.
von Hoerner, S.J. (1975). Population explosion and interstellar expansion. Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 28, 691-712.
