Develop basic historical knowledge about the process of productivity growth since the Middle Ages.
* Introduction to the standard neoclassical (Solow) growth model and some augmentations, and basic endogenous growth models.
* Applying empirical techniques to analyse the process of productivity growth.

Economic growth has been the focus of economists and economics from well before the discipline was founded. Adam Smith kicked off our discipline with an Inquiry into the Causes and Nature or Wealth of Nations. Jared Diamond’s (1998) Guns, Germs and Steel starts with the question of Djali, a native of Papua New Guinea, who poses the question bluntly: Why is it that you white men have so much cargo (stuff) and we New Guineans so little? Indeed. Why are some nations rich and others poor? And how did we go from a world in which consecutive generations lived the same, modest hunter-gatherer life in small, nomadic tribes to a world where some nation states have the power to destroy the planet a hundred times over and we each consume energy and resources at levels that threaten to destroy our entire habitat. If you look around on planet earth today or look back in history only a mere 250 years, a blink of an eye in the history of our species, what is most striking is the incredible inequality and the speed at which this has developed. Not 200 years ago, most people in even the richest parts of the world would live close to subsistence on their family farms. Now we fly to Thailand for fun and obesity is about to kill more people than malnutrition. As some choke on cheap food, energy, and stuff, others still face dire poverty. And we take this all for granted. Historically and geographically, however, we live in an exceptional time and an exceptional place. Our level of material wealth is unprecedented and as we are about to learn, unsustainable. It is on us, economists, to make sense of this. What has caused this unprecedented episode of material growth? Can it be replicated in other parts of the world? Is it sustainable in those parts of the world that have enjoyed it in the past decades? And can it be redirected to respect the planetary and social boundaries that we seem to be approaching and/or have already passed? For all these questions, we need to understand the process of economic growth and the role of institutions therein. These are only the biggest questions that your generation faces today.

Jones, C.I., and D. Vollrath [2024], Introduction to economic growth, 4th ed., W.W. Norton & Company
And selected materials that are publicly available or will be provided.

• Knowledge and understanding of introductory microeconomics and macroeconomic (comparable to courses Microeconomics, code EBC1010/1011/1012, and Macroeconomics, code EBC1018/1019/1020).
• Knowledge and understanding of mathematical and statistical techniques at an intermediate level, especially differential equations / dynamic systems and regression analysis (comparable to course Quantitative Methods III, code EBC2011).
• Exchange students need to major in economics.
• An advanced level of English.