Editorial introduction

Abstract

“Poverty has no causes, wealth has causes”—this statement, attributed to the development economist Peter Bauer (1915-2002),1 may serve as the title of a book on the entire history of growth theory since Adam Smith’s An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations (Smith, 1776). Indeed to understand why the standard of living differs across people, countries and time we need to understand the causes of wealth. This is the topic of the current Economics and Business Review. With this issue the Review honours the outstanding contribution of Professor Oded Galor, Herbert H. Goldberger Professor of Economics at Brown University, to the field of growth theory. At the same time it celebrates the degree of doctor honoris causa that the Poznań University of Economics and Business conferred on him in 2019.2 Oded Galor’s eminent research on the causes and the consequences of economic growth has substantially advanced our understanding of how and why economies accumulate wealth differently. His research has a tremendous impact on the scientific community. The breadth as well as the depth of his research agenda is impressive.3 Seminal contributions to the fields of inequality and economic growth (Galor & Zeira, 1993) and of comparative development (Ashraf & Galor, 2011) stand out. Research papers like Galor and Moav (2002) and Ashraf and Galor (2013) initiated a new literature on the deep roots in comparative economic development. In the profession and beyond, Oded Galor is probably best known as the founder of Unified Growth Theory (Galor, 2005, 2011). This fascinating theory depicts humanity’s process of economic development from the Malthusian Regime to the Modern Growth Regime in a single analytical framework that accounts for the specifics of each regime as well as for the endogenous transition between them. The first paper of this issue is Oded Galor’s article The journey of humanity: Roots of inequality in the wealth of nations. Here the author provides a brief and concise world economic history from the vantage point of Unified Growth Theory. Covering the time span from the appearance of Homo sapiens some 300,000 years up to now his focus is on two striking mysteries of human history namely, i) the emergence of sustained economic growth in large parts of