Home What will drive global economic growth in the digital age?
Article
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

What will drive global economic growth in the digital age?

  • Jakub Growiec ORCID logo EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: June 24, 2022

Abstract

This paper provides a theoretical investigation of possible sources of long-run economic growth in the future. Historically, in the industrial era and during the ongoing digital revolution (which began approximately in the 1980s) the main engine of global economic growth has been research and development (R&D), translating into systematic labor-augmenting technological progress and trend growth in labor productivity. If in the future all essential production or R&D tasks will eventually be subject to automation, though, the engine of growth will be shifted to the accumulation of programmable hardware (capital), and R&D will lose its prominence. Economic growth will then accelerate, no longer constrained by the scarce human input. By contrast, if some essential production and R&D tasks will never be fully automatable, then R&D may forever remain the main growth engine, and the human input may forever remain the scarce, limiting factor of global growth. Additional studied mechanisms include the accumulation of R&D capital and hardware-augmenting technical change.


Corresponding author: Jakub Growiec, Department of Quantitative Economics, SGH Warsaw School of Economics, Warsaw, Poland, E-mail:

Funding source: Narodowe Centrum Nauki

Award Identifier / Grant number: 2017/27/B/HS4/00189

Acknowledgement

I thank an anonymous Reviewer for valuable comments and suggestions which helped substantially improve the paper. All errors are my responsibility.

  1. Author contribution: All the authors have accepted responsibility for the entire content of this submitted manuscript and approved submission.

  2. Research funding: Funding from National Science Center (Narodowe Centrum Nauki) under grant OPUS 14 No. 2017/27/B/HS4/00189 is gratefully acknowledged.

  3. Conflict of interest statement: The authors declare no conflicts of interest regarding this article.

References

Acemoglu, D. 2009. Introduction to Modern Economic Growth. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Acemoglu, D., and D. Autor. 2011. “Skills, Tasks and Technologies: Implications for Employment and Earnings.” In Handbook of Labor Economics, Vol. 4, edited by O. Ashenfelter, and D. Card, 1043–171. Amsterdam: Elsevier. chapter 12.10.1016/S0169-7218(11)02410-5Search in Google Scholar

Acemoglu, D., and P. Restrepo. 2018a. “Modeling Automation.” AEA Papers and Proceedings 108: 48–53. https://doi.org/10.1257/pandp.20181020.Search in Google Scholar

Acemoglu, D., and P. Restrepo. 2018b. “The Race between Man and Machine: Implications of Technology for Growth, Factor Shares and Employment.” The American Economic Review 108: 1488–542. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20160696.Search in Google Scholar

Aghion, P., B. F. Jones, and C. I. Jones. 2019. “Artificial Intelligence and Economic Growth.” In The Economics of Artificial Intelligence: An Agenda, edited by A. Agrawal, and J. Gans, 237–82. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Search in Google Scholar

Andrews, D., C. Criscuolo, and P. N. Gal. 2016. The Global Productivity Slowdown, Technology Divergence and Public Policy: A Firm Level Perspective, Working Party No. 1 on Macroeconomic and Structural Policy Analysis. Paris: OECD.Search in Google Scholar

Arntz, M., T. Gregory, and U. Zierahn. 2016. “The Risk of Automation for Jobs in OECD Countries: A Comparative Analysis, OECD Social.” In Employment and Migration Working Paper No 189. Paris: OECD Publishing.Search in Google Scholar

Autor, D., D. Dorn, L. F. Katz, C. Patterson, and J. Van Reenen. 2020. “The Fall of the Labor Share and the Rise of Superstar Firms.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 135: 645–709. https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjaa004.Search in Google Scholar

Autor, D. H., and D. Dorn. 2013. “The Growth of Low-Skill Service Jobs and the Polarization of the Us Labor Market.” The American Economic Review 103 (5): 1553–97. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.103.5.1553.Search in Google Scholar

Barkai, S. 2020. “Declining Labor and Capital Shares.” The Journal of Finance 75: 2421–63. https://doi.org/10.1111/jofi.12909.Search in Google Scholar

Barro, R. J., and X. X. Sala-i-Martin. 2003. Economic Growth. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.10.3386/w9682Search in Google Scholar

Beaudreau, B. C., and H. D. Lightfoot. 2015. “The Physical Limits to Economic Growth by R&D Funded Innovation.” Energy 84: 45–52. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2015.01.118.Search in Google Scholar

Benzell, S. G., and E. Brynjolfsson. 2019. “Digital Abundance and Scarce Genius: Implications for Wages, Interest Rates, and Growth.” In Working Paper, MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy. Cambridge, MA: Massachussets Institute of Technology.10.3386/w25585Search in Google Scholar

Benzell, S. G., L. J. Kotlikoff, G. LaGarda, and J. D. Sachs. 2015. “Robots Are Us: Some Economics of Human Replacement.” In Working Paper No. 20941, NBER. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.10.3386/w20941Search in Google Scholar

Berg, A., E. F. Buffie, and L.-F. Zanna. 2018. “Should We Fear the Robot Revolution? (The Correct Answer is Yes).” Journal of Monetary Economics 97: 117–48. https://doi.org/10.5089/9781484300831.001.Search in Google Scholar

Bloom, N., C. I. Jones, J. Van Reenen, and M. Webb. 2020. “Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?” The American Economic Review 110 (4): 1104–44. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20180338.Search in Google Scholar

Bostrom, N. 2014. Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Brynjolfsson, E., and A. McAfee. 2014. The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies. New York, NY: W. W. Norton.Search in Google Scholar

Brynjolfsson, E., D. Rock, and C. Syverson. 2019. “Artificial Intelligence and the Modern Productivity Paradox: A Clash of Expectations and Statistics.” In The Economics of Artificial Intelligence: An Agenda, edited by A. Agrawal, and J. Gans, 23–57. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.10.7208/chicago/9780226613475.003.0001Search in Google Scholar

Caselli, F., and A. Manning. 2019. “Robot Arithmetic: New Technology and Wages.” AER: Insights 1: 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1257/aeri.20170036.Search in Google Scholar

Davidson, T. 2021. “Could Advanced AI Drive Explosive Economic Growth?” In Report. San Francisco: Open Philanthropy.Search in Google Scholar

DeCanio, S. J. 2016. “Robots and Humans – Complements or Substitutes?” Journal of Macroeconomics 49: 280–91. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmacro.2016.08.003.Search in Google Scholar

Frey, C. B., and M. Osborne. 2017. “The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation?” Technological Forecasting and Social Change 114: 254–80. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2016.08.019.Search in Google Scholar

Gillings, M. R., M. Hilbert, and D. J. Kemp. 2016. “Information in the Biosphere: Biological and Digital Worlds.” Trends in Ecology & Evolution 31: 180–9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2015.12.013.Search in Google Scholar PubMed

Gordon, R. J. 2016. The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.10.1515/9781400873302Search in Google Scholar

Grace, K. 2013. “Algorithmic Progress in Six Domains.” In Technical Report 2013-3. Berkeley: Machine Intelligence Research Institute.Search in Google Scholar

Graetz, G., and G. Michaels. 2018. “Robots at Work.” The Review of Economics and Statistics 100: 753–68. https://doi.org/10.1162/rest_a_00754.Search in Google Scholar

Groth, C., K.-J. Koch, and T. Steger. 2010. “When Economic Growth is Less Than Exponential.” Economic Theory 44: 213–42. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00199-009-0480-y.Search in Google Scholar

Growiec, J. 2019. “The Hardware–Software Model: A New Conceptual Framework of Production, R&D and Growth with AI.” In KAE WP 2019/042. Warsaw: SGH Warsaw School of Economics.Search in Google Scholar

Growiec, J. 2022a. Accelerating Economic Growth: Lessons from 200,000 Years of Technological Progress and Human Development. Cham: Springer.10.1007/978-3-031-07195-9Search in Google Scholar

Growiec, J. 2022b. “Automation, Partial and Full.” Macroeconomic Dynamics 26. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1365100521000031.Search in Google Scholar

Growiec, J., P. McAdam, and J. Mućk. 2022. “Are Ideas Really Getting Harder to Find? R&D Capital and the Idea Production Function.” In SGH KAE Working Paper No. 71. Warsaw: SGH Warsaw School of Economics.Search in Google Scholar

Hanson, R. 2001. “Economic Growth Given Machine Intelligence.” In Working Paper. Berkeley: University of California.Search in Google Scholar

Hanson, R., and E. Yudkowsky. 2013. The Hanson-Yudkowsky AI-Foom Debate. Berkeley, CA: Machine Intelligence Research Institute.Search in Google Scholar

Hemous, D., and M. Olsen. 2018. “The Rise of the Machines: Automation, Horizontal Innovation and Income Inequality.” In Working Paper. Zurich: University of Zurich.Search in Google Scholar

Hernandez, D., and T. B. Brown. 2020. “Measuring the Algorithmic Efficiency of Neural Networks.” Preprint arxiv:2005.04305, arXiv.Search in Google Scholar

Hilbert, M., and P. López. 2011. “The World’s Technological Capacity to Store, Communicate, and Compute Information.” Science 332: 60–5. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1200970.Search in Google Scholar PubMed

Jones, C. I. 1995. “R&D-Based Models of Economic Growth.” Journal of Political Economy 103: 759–84. https://doi.org/10.1086/262002.Search in Google Scholar

Jones, C. I. 2002. “Sources of U.S. Economic Growth in a World of Ideas.” The American Economic Review 92: 220–39. https://doi.org/10.1257/000282802760015685.Search in Google Scholar

Jones, C. I. 2005. “Growth and Ideas.” In Handbook of Economic Growth, edited by P. Aghion, and S. Durlauf. North-Holland.10.1016/S1574-0684(05)01016-6Search in Google Scholar

Jones, L. E., and R. E. Manuelli. 1990. “A Convex Model of Equilibrium Growth: Theory and Policy Implications.” Journal of Political Economy 98: 1008–38. https://doi.org/10.1086/261717.Search in Google Scholar

Jumper, J., R. Evans, A. Pritzel, T. Green, M. Figurnov, O. Ronneberger, K. Tunyasuvunakool, R. Bates, A. Žídek, A. Potapenko, A. Bridgland, C. Meyer, S. A. A. Kohl, A. j. Ballard, A. Cowie, R. Romera-Paredes, S. Nikolov, R. Jain, A. Adler, T. Back, S. Petersen, D. Reiman, E. Clancy, M. Zielinski, M. Steinegger, M. Pacholska, T. Berghammer, S. Bodenstein, D. Silver, O. Vinyals, A. W. Senior, K. Kavukcuoglu, P. Kohli, and D. Hassabis. 2021. “Highly Accurate Protein Structure Prediction with AlphaFold.” Nature 596: 583–9, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03819-2.Search in Google Scholar PubMed PubMed Central

Klump, R., P. McAdam, and A. Willman. 2007. “Factor Substitution and Factor Augmenting Technical Progress in the US.” The Review of Economics and Statistics 89: 183–92. https://doi.org/10.1162/rest.89.1.183.Search in Google Scholar

Klump, R., P. McAdam, and A. Willman. 2012. “Normalization in CES Production Functions: Theory and Empirics.” Journal of Economic Surveys 26: 769–99. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6419.2012.00730.x.Search in Google Scholar

Kurzweil, R. 2005. The Singularity is Near. New York: Penguin.Search in Google Scholar

Miyagiwa, K., and C. Papageorgiou. 2007. “Endogenous Aggregate Elasticity of Substitution.” Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control 31: 2899–919. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jedc.2006.06.009.Search in Google Scholar

Nordhaus, W. D. 2021. “Are We Approaching an Economic Singularity? Information Technology and the Future of Economic Growth.” American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 13: 299–332. https://doi.org/10.1257/mac.20170105.Search in Google Scholar

Rivera-Batiz, L. A., and P. M. Romer. 1991. “Economic Integration and Endogenous Growth.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 106 (2): 531–55. https://doi.org/10.2307/2937946.Search in Google Scholar

Romer, P. M. 1986. “Increasing Returns and Long-Run Growth.” Journal of Political Economy 94 (5): 1002-37. https://doi.org/10.1086/261420.Search in Google Scholar

Romer, P. M. 1990. “Endogenous Technological Change.” Journal of Political Economy 98: S71–S102. https://doi.org/10.1086/261725.Search in Google Scholar

Roodman, D. 2020. “On the Probability Distribution of Long-Term Changes in the Growth Rate of the Global Economy: An outside View.” In Report. San Francisco: Open Philanthropy.Search in Google Scholar

Sachs, J. D., S. G. Benzell, and G. LaGarda. 2015. “Robots: Curse or Blessing? A Basic Framework.” In Working Paper Np. 21091, NBER. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.10.3386/w21091Search in Google Scholar

Sandberg, A. 2013. “An Overview of Models of Technological Singularity.” In The Transhumanist Reader: Classical and Contemporary Essays on the Science, Technology, and Philosophy of the Human Future, edited by M. More, and N. Vita-More, 376–94. Chichester: Wiley.10.1002/9781118555927.ch36Search in Google Scholar

Silver, D., T. Hubert, J. Schrittwieser, I. Antonoglou, M. Lai, A. Guez, M. Lanctot, L. Sifre, K. Kumaran, T. Graepel, T. Lillicrap, K. Simonyan, and D. Hassabis. 2018. “A General Reinforcement Learning Algorithm that Masters Chess, Shogi, and Go through Self-Play.” Science 362: 1140–4, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aar6404.Search in Google Scholar PubMed

Solow, R. M. 1956. “A Contribution to the Theory of Economic Growth.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 70: 65–94. https://doi.org/10.2307/1884513.Search in Google Scholar

Tegmark, M. 2017. Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. New York: Knopf.Search in Google Scholar

Trammell, P., and A. Korinek. 2021. Economic Growth Under Transformative AI: A Guide to the Vast Range of Possibilities for Output Growth, Wages, and the Labor Share, Global Priorities Institute WP 8-2020. Oxford: Oxford University.Search in Google Scholar

Xue, J., and C. K. Yip. 2013. “Aggregate Elasticity of Substitution and Economic Growth: A Synthesis.” Journal of Macroeconomics 38: 60–75. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmacro.2013.07.001.Search in Google Scholar

Yudkowsky, E. 2013. “Intelligence Explosion Microeconomics.” In Technical Report 2013-1. Berkeley, CA: Machine Intelligence Research Institute.Search in Google Scholar

Zeira, J. 1998. “Workers, Machines, and Economic Growth.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 113: 1091–117. https://doi.org/10.1162/003355398555847.Search in Google Scholar

Received: 2021-08-12
Revised: 2022-05-17
Accepted: 2022-06-03
Published Online: 2022-06-24

© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Downloaded on 21.11.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/snde-2021-0079/html
Scroll to top button