Prof. Roberto Scazzieri, University of Bologna & Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei.

Structural change is the most distinctive feature of classical political economy. The classical theories of increasing returns (Smith, Babbage) and of decreasing returns (Malthus, Ricardo, West) highlight a relationship between change and invariance that is at the root of the formation of the wealth of nations. This relationship makes the wealth of nations to reflect a proportionality condition between different productions subsystems (such as manufacturing vs. the primary sector). The proportionality condition provides a benchmark for investigating the dynamics of wealth of nations in terms of relative structural invariance, as the different components of a dynamic economy usually change at different rates, while some may not change at all. The criterion of relative structural invariance provides a unifying framework for assessing the relationship between local dynamics and systemic conditions, which is central to the contemporary theories of structural change. This criterion also provides a clue into the relationship between short-, medium-, and long-term dynamics, and into the possible alignments between the policy measures corresponding to the different time horizons.

Speaker(s): Prof. Roberto Scazzieri (University of Bologna & Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei), Dr. Antonio Andreoni (SOAS)

Event Date:

8 February 2017

Released by:

SOAS Economics Podcast