The concept of economic growth is revealed by its main definition, according to which it is customary to consider economic growth as quantitative and qualitative changes in the social product for a specific period of time.
The Russian theory of economic growth в своем развитии во многом следовала постулатам и guided by the achievements of the Marxist school. In the middle of the last century this school achieved really significant scientific results. The Marxist theory of economic growth was based on two main provisions: the relationship between the growth rates of the economy and savings and the progressiveness of the influence on the growth of the economy of public property.
Western theories of economic growth tried to reflect the diversity and multifactor development of the economy, putting forward many interesting hypotheses and concepts.
Western economists gradually ceased to scrutinize the short- and medium-term models of economic growth и обратили свое основное внимание на долгосрочные models of economic growth. In addition, scientists switched their attention from the identification of growth factors to the representation of the growth process in more accurate measurements and specific figures.
Approximately in the middle of the century appeared such models of economic growth, which are characterized by attempts to reflect economic growth mathematically for the purpose of exploring the possible, the selection of the desired area.
A similar neoclassical direction uses such an instrument of analysis common to all models in quantitative terms as a production function.
The basis of production functions that can be used in the construction models of economic growth, lies a two-factor function that considersthe dependence of production volumes only on factors of labor and capital. At the same time, the theory is completely abstracted from the influence of other factors at this stage.
For the first time such a two-factor model wasused by American scientists in the manufacturing industry. The developers of the idea were mathematician C. Cobb and economist P. Douglas. Subsequently, the Cobb-Douglas production function began to be widely used by many scientists to develop their own growth models, taking into account the expanding number of production factors.
In the late 50's it was successfully used by the Americaneconomist R. Solow, who undertook one of the first attempts to study the dependence of the volume of production on the factor of technical progress. The latter can be accounted for differently in different models of economic growth: either as an exogenous factor or as an endogenous one.
R.Solow used several equations to describe the state of the macroeconomic system. His works have created new opportunities for analyzing macroeconomic systems and developing new growth models of this type. By and large, neoclassical models, with the support of the functions of production, determine the quantitative characteristics that are taken into account when assessing the influence of production factors on the growth rates of the economy.
Neoclassicism proceeded from the premise that the price on the market provides a balance of supply and demand for investment, resources, savings and other factors. Unlike them neo-Keynesians proceeded from the opposite premise, considering economic growth as an unstable phenomenon. Such models include the models of E. Domar, N. Kaldor, R. Harrod, E. Hansen and others.
The stages of economic growth according toAmerican sociologist W. Rostow, there are the following: traditional society, a transitional society, a period of revolutionary shifts, a period of mature society and an era of a high stage of public consumption.
