How Growth Really Happens: The Making of Economic Miracles Through Production, Governance, and Skills, Best Michael H.

A groundbreaking study that shows how countries can create innovative, production-based economies for the twenty-first century

Achieving economic growth is one of todays key challenges. In this groundbreaking book, Michael Best argues that to understand how successful growth happens we need an economic framework that focuses on production, governance, and skills.

This production-centric framework is the culmination of three simultaneous journeys. The first has been Bests visits to hundreds of factories worldwide, starting early as the son of a labor organizer and continuing through his work as an academic and industrial consultant. The second is a survey of two hundred years of economic thought from Babbage to Krugman, with stops along the way for Marx, Marshall, Young, Penrose, Richardson, Schumpeter, Kuznets, Abramovitz, Keynes, and Jacobs. The third is a tour of historical episodes of successful and failed transformations, focusing sharply on three core elements--the production system, business organization, and skill formation--and their interconnections.

Best makes the case that government should create the institutional infrastructures needed to support these elements and their interconnections rather than subsidize individual enterprises. The power of Bests alternative framework is illustrated by case studies of transformative experiences previously regarded as economic miracles: Americas World War II industrial buildup, Germanys postwar recovery, Greater Bostons innovation system, Irelands tech-sector boom, and the rise of the Asian Tigers and China.

Accessible and engaging, How Growth Really Happens is required reading for anyone who wants to advance todays crucial debates about industrial policy, climate change, globalization, technological change, and the future of work.