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News Events About

Overview

Why do prosperous economies develop in some countries and not in others? The Working Group on the Foundations of Long-Run Prosperity applies approaches from a range of disciplines to understand the mechanics of long-run growth. It disseminates the results to the research community, policy makers, and the broader public.

Understanding how and why economies prosper, stagnate, or wither is a question of first-order importance, but our knowledge about the process of economic growth is surprisingly thin. Indeed, if growth was well understood as a scholarly matter, policies based on theory and empirics would have produced convergence in levels of economic development across countries rather than divergence.

The working group aims to deepen scholars’ and policy makers’ understanding of long-run economic growth by convening scholars from a range of disciplines—including biology, classics, computer science, economics, history, and political science—at conferences to present research-in-progress and debate its logic, treatment of evidence, and policy implications.

The Long-Run Prosperity Research Brief Series also delivers insights from cutting-edge research to broader, non-academic audiences. Research briefs highlight research findings that enhance our understanding of the complex factors that drive long-run economic growth and examine their policy implications.

To learn more, read the working group white paper and sign up for our newsletter. The working group organizers can be reached here.

CHAIR
Stephen Haber

Stephen Haber

Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow

Stephen Haber is the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the A.A. and Jeanne Welch Milligan Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University. In addition, he is a professor of political science, professor of history, and professor of economics (by courtesy), as well as a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.

Amit Seru

Amit Seru

Senior Fellow

Amit Seru is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Steven and Roberta Denning Professor of Finance at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, a senior fellow at Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). He was formerly a faculty member at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.

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