The Past and Future of Economic Growth: A Semi-Endogenous Perspective
从半内生增长理论视角，解释过去50多年美国增长超长期趋势的原因，并探讨未来增长可能放缓或加速的因素，如教育、资源配置、全球研发强度、人才发掘和人工智能。
The nonrivalry of ideas gives rise to increasing returns, a fact celebrated in Paul Romer's recent Nobel Prize. An implication is that the long-run rate of economic growth is the product of the degree of increasing returns and the growth rate of research effort; this is the essence of semi-endogenous growth theory. This review interprets past and future growth from a semi-endogenous perspective. For 50+ years, US growth has substantially exceeded its long-run rate because of rising educational attainment, declining misallocation, and rising (global) research intensity, implying that frontier growth could slow markedly in the future. Other forces push in the opposite direction. First is the prospect of “finding new Einsteins”: How many talented researchers have we missed historically because of the underdevelopment of China and India and because of barriers that discouraged women inventors? Second is the longer-term prospect that artificial intelligence could augment or even replace people as researchers. Throughout, the review highlights many opportunities for further research.