Perspectives on Allyn Young in Theories of Endogenous Growth

Abstract

A central message of Allyn Abbott Young's (1928) seminal paper on increasing returns and economic progress was the seeming tautology that “the division of labor depends in large part upon the division of labor.” From this he deduced that a major source of growth is growth itself. In this fundamental sense growth is endogenous and cumulative. He spoke of the “togetherness” of economic phenomena and doubted that the apparatus of supply and demand and marginal productivity theory could be integrated to give the social picture or explain why growth tends to be self-sustaining rather than self-exhausting.