Constitutional Environments and Economic Growth / / Gerald W. Scully.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton Legacy Lib. eBook Package 1980-1999
• VerfasserIn: Scully, Gerald W.,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2014]; ©1992
• Year of Publication: 2014
• Edition: Course Book
• Language: English
• Series: Princeton Legacy Library ; 209
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (258 p.)

In this provocative work, Gerald Scully develops and empirically tests a theory about how a nation's constitutional setting affects its economic growth. Modern growth theory links the rise in the standard of living to capital formation, both physical and human, and to technological progress, and development economists continue to believe that the transformation of the less developed world cannot occur without massive government control of the economy. Scully, on the other hand, maintains that material advancement is as much affected by the choice of the economic, legal, and political institutions under which people live and work as it is by resource endowment and technological progress. Nothing in the neoclassical theory of growth considers the "rules of the game" under which capital is accumulated and innovation is made. Redressing this neglect, Scully proposes ways of measuring the economic, civil, and political freedom within a society's institutional framework, and he reveals that freedom, or the lack thereof, powerfully and demonstrably influences not only economic progress but also income distribution. Politically open societies grow at nearly three times the rate of those where freedom is more circumscribed, and they also have a more equitable distribution of income. Finally, Scully measures the effect of the size of the state on economic progress, showing that the larger the amount of government expenditures out of gross domestic product, the lower the rate of economic progress.Originally published in 1992.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Figures and Tables -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- CHAPTER 1. Overview -- CHAPTER 2. The Theory of Economic Growth and Economic Policy -- CHAPTER 3. The Constitutional Setting and the Gains from Exchange -- CHAPTER 4. A Theory of the Evolution of the Constitutional Setting -- CHAPTER 5. Measures of Liberty -- CHAPTER 6. The Choice of Law and the Extent of Liberty -- CHAPTER 7. The Constitutional Setting and Economic Development -- CHAPTER 8. The Constitutional Setting and the Distribution of Income -- CHAPTER 9. The Economic Effect of the Size of the State -- CHAPTER 10. What Is to Be Done? Reform of the Institutional Framework and Economic Policy for Progress -- Notes -- Index