Abstract
Abstract. The so-called great divergence in the income per capita is described in the Unified Growth Theory as the mind-boggling and unresolved mystery about the growth process. This mystery has now been solved: the great divergence never happened. It was created by the manipulation of data. Economic growth in various regions is at different levels of development but it follows similar, non-divergent trajectories. Unified Growth Theory is shown yet again to be incorrect and scientifically unacceptable. It promotes incorrect and even potentially dangerous concepts. The distorted presentation of data supporting the concept of the great divergence shows that economic growth is now developing along moderately-increasing trajectories but mathematical analysis of the same data and even their undistorted presentation shows that these trajectories are now increasing approximately vertically with time. So, while the distorted presentation of data used in the Unified Growth Theory and the spuriously-created great divergence suggest the generally sustainable and secure economic growth, the undistorted presentation of data demonstrates that the growth is unsustainable and insecure. Similar dangerously incorrect concept promoted by the Unified Growth Theory is the repeated doctrine of takeoffs from the hypothetical but non-existent stagnation to growth. They also suggest prosperous and secure future. Such takeoffs never happened but even without them the current economic growth is insecure.
Keywords. Economic growth, Unified Growth Theory, Regional economic growth, Great Divergence, Income per capita, Hyperbolic growth
JEL. A10, A12, C12, C20, C50, F00, N00, Y80.
References
Anderson, L.R., & Holt, C.A. (1997). Information cascades in the laboratory. American Economic Review, 87(5), 847-862.
Ashraf, Q.H. (2009). Essays on Deep Determinants of Comparative Economic Development. Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Economics, Brown University, Providence.
Begg, I.M., Anas, A., & Farinacci, S. (1992). Dissociation of process in belief: Source recollection, statement familiarity and the illusion of truth. Journal of Experimental Psychology. 121(4), 446-458. doi. 10.1037/0096-3445.121.4.446
Biraben, J-N. (1980). An Essay Concerning Mankind's Evolution. Population, Selected Papers, December.
Bikhchandani, S., Hirshleifer, D., & Welch, I.A. (1992). Theory of fads, fashion, custom, and cultural change as informational cascades. Journal of Political Economy, 100(5), 992-1026. doi. 10.1086/261849
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.
De Vany, A., & Lee, C. (2008). Information cascades in multi-agent models. [Retrieved from].
De Vany, A., & Walls, R. (1999). Uncertainty in the movie industry: Does star power reduce the terror of the box office? Journal of Cultural Economics, 23(4), 285-318. doi. 10.1023/A:1007608125988
Durand, J.D. (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.D. (1977). Historical Estimates of World Population: An Evaluation. Population and Development Review, 3(3), 256-293. doi. 10.2307/1971891
Easley, D., & Kleinberg, J. (2010). Networks, crowds, and markets. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
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. and 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
Grebe, T., Schmid, J., & Stiehler, A. (2008). Do individuals recognize cascade behavior of others? – An experimental study. Journal of Economic Psychology, 29(2), 197-209. doi. 10.1016/j.joep.2007.05.003
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
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].
Nielsen, R. (2006). The Green Handbook: Seven trends shaping the future of our planet. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
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. (2015b). The Insecure Future of the World Economic Growth. Journal of Economic and Social Thought, 2(4), 242-255.
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). Demographic Transition Theory and its link to the historical economic growth. Journal of Economic and Political Economy, 3(1), 32-49.
Nielsen, R.W. (2016d). Unified Growth Theory contradicted by the mathematical analysis of the historical growth of human population. Journal of Economics and Political Economy 3(2), 242-263.
Nielsen, R.W. (2016e). Unified Growth Theory contradicted by the absence of takeoffs in the Gross Domestic Product. Turkish Economic Review, 3(1), 16-27.
Nielsen, R.W. (2016f). 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. (2016g). Mathematical analysis of historical income per capita distributions. Turkish Economic Review, 3(2), 300-319.
Nielsen, R.W. (2016h). Puzzling properties of the historical growth rate of income per capita explained. Journal of Economics Library, 3(2), 241-256.
Ondrias, K. (1999). The brain, consciousness & illusion of truth (E. Nazinska, Trans. & Ed.). Boca Raton, FL: Universal Publishers.
Parks, C. M., & Tooth, J. P. (2006). Fluency, familiarity, aging, and the illusion of truth. Aging, neuropsychology, and cognition, 13(2), 225–253. doi. 10.1080/138255890968691
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.
Ramsey, M., Raafat, R.M., Chater, N., & Frith, C. (2009). Herding in humans. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13(10), 420-428. doi. 10.1016/j.tics.2009.08.002
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.
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.
Snowdon, B. & Galor, O. (2008). Towards a Unified Theory of Economic Growth. World Economics, 9, 97-151.
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.
Walden, E.A., & Browne, G.J. (2003). Running with the pack: An empirical examination of information cascades in the adoption of novel technologies. Lubbock: Texas Tech. University.
WWF, (2010). Living Planet Report 2010: Biodiversity, biocapacity and development. Gland, Switzerland: WWF International.
