Growth theory and measurement, then the comparative and global context that complicates it, in fifteen short notes.
The traditional idea of growth is just a rising GDP. The newer idea treats that rise as a means, not an end, and refuses five kinds of growth that technically happen but still fail people.
Rostow's stages of growth, the Harrod and Domar model, Lewis's dual sector model, and Solow's growth model, the earlier theories that the rest of this series builds on and reacts against.
Three ways of defining what a good quality of life actually means, from Todaro's core values to Sen's capability approach to the human development approach.
What capital really means in modern economics, how a country's total output is determined, and how economists measure the cost of producing one more unit.
Why education and health are both an end in themselves and an engine of growth, and why the returns on each compound when they are invested in together.
Why families really demand schooling, and how the gap between the private and social cost of education can end up deepening inequality rather than closing it.
How economists turn unequal income distribution into a curve, and then into a single comparable number, and what can actually be done about it.
Relative poverty against absolute poverty, why the poverty gap matters as much as the headcount, and the three broad approaches used to close it.
Cyclical, structural, frictional, seasonal, disguised, and under employment are not the same problem, and each calls for a different policy response.
A closing look at why a rising GDP figure and a better life for ordinary citizens are not the same thing, and what role government and market failures play in that gap.
Does a growing population strain development, or help drive it? Malthus and Boserup, Ehrlich and Simon, and a close look at China and India's contrasting population policies.
Why some countries ended up rich and others poor across centuries, from Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson's reversal of fortune to Hofstede's cultural dimensions and the economics of social capital.
Where technological progress actually comes from, Schumpeter's creative destruction, and what separates a necessity entrepreneur from an opportunity entrepreneur.
Why natural capital gets overused, how climate change falls hardest on developing countries, and how the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals tie it all together.
Joseph Stiglitz's case for why poorly sequenced globalization hurt many emerging markets, and why East Asia managed to capture its benefits while limiting the damage.