Stagnation
| Lecture handout: Stagnation* |
| Activity: Transformative Innovations |
Textbook Reading: Chapter 12 (Section 12.3; pp. 413-421)
Key readings:
- Eichengreen, Barry, 2015, “Secular Stagnation: The Long View.” American Economic Review, 105 (5): 66-70.
- Cowen, Tyler, “Ten Ways to Live a Less Complacent Life”, LinkedIn, May 2017
- Thierer, Adam, “How Many Lives Are Lost Due to the Precautionary Principle?” The Bridge, expert commentary, October 2019
Recommended audio:
- The End of Invention, BBC Radio 4, March 2022 (see this post for links and more discussion)
I was saddened to learn recently that same amount of time had passed between the first human airplane flight and the first human spaceflight as between the first spaceflight and 2018 (see here).
Here is an example of a business model that sounds very high tech and contemporary… but originates from the 1930s!!
The UK used to have more electric vehicles than anywhere else in the world:
A fleet delivering local, organic produce on a next-day/subscription model, with payment after delivery, zero single-use plastics, and daily recycling pickups. pic.twitter.com/4BsxefcEvH
— dan barker (@danbarker) September 20, 2019
Here’s a photo of Lady Priscilla Norman on her electric scooter, taken in 1917!
To some extent this lecture is about trying to work out what happened in the early 1970s. This website poses (almost) the same question:
Three weird (possibly related_ facts about this period:
- Energy consumption flatlines in the 1970s (great news for environmentalists!)
- Number of beards increases dramatically in the mid 1970s (source):
3. EAP (forerunner to ESCP Business School) is founded in 1973
Perhaps people will look back on 2007 and say “what happened??”
The way we talk about “wtf happened in 1971”, future generations will talk about “wtf happened in 2007” pic.twitter.com/iqDl4LS3G0
— Nabeel S. Qureshi (@nabeelqu) May 19, 2023
The lecture provided some pessimistic views on transformative breakthroughs. But every now and then I notice the power of steady, incremental progress. For example:
Noah Smith has a nice Twitter thread on progress since 1970.
40 years of improved precision engineering and execution speed https://t.co/pDLGbeeqAN
— Roberto Alonso González Lezcano (@robertoglezcano) February 2, 2020
Here’s a great video showing the progress made in car passenger safety:
| Learning Objectives: Understand the scholarly literature on the secular stagnation thesis |