The Great Economic Slowdown: How Narrowed Technical Progress Brought Static Wages, Sky-High Wealth, and Much Discontent

This book charts the fall of productivity growth and the rise of inequality within global economies and societies. Set out through a series of economic models, the impact of falling rates of productivity growth, particularly in the USA, are examined in relation to lowering interest rates, the lifting of the stock market, and an increasingly unequal distribution of wealth. The economic impact of COVID-19, including the increased tendency to work from home and renewed public debt pressures, are contextualised within broader issues of wage suppression and discontent within the labor force to highlight how average workers have been left behind. The rise of China and the geopolitical tensions that it has created is also discussed.

This book sets out the macro and microeconomic innovations that can create a revival in productivity growth in the coming years. It will be relevant to students and researchers interested in global economic trends and the political economy.

Edmund Phelps, the 2006 Nobel Laureate in Economics, is McVickar Professor Emeritus of Political Economy and Director of the Center on Capitalism and Society at Columbia University. His work can be seen as a lifelong project to put “people as we know them” into economic theory. In Mass Flourishing (2013) and Dynamism (2020), he argues and tests that broad job satisfaction in a nation requires widespread, indigenous innovating and that depends on the nation’s values. His latest book is My Journeys in Economic Theory (2023).

Hian Teck Hoon is Professor of Economics at the Singapore Management University. He is a co-author of Dynamism: The Values That Drive Innovation, Job Satisfaction, and Economic Growth (Harvard University Press, 2020). He is the author of Trade, Jobs and Wages (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2000) and Economic Dynamism, Openness, and Inclusion: How Singapore Can Make the Transition from an Era of Catch-up Growth to Life in a Mature Economy (World Scientific Publishing, 2019). Hian Teck is a past Vice-President of the Economic Society of Singapore (2002-2004).

Gylfi Zoega is Professor of Economics at the University of Iceland and (now part-time) at Birkbeck College, London, since 1993 and was an external member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Central Bank of Iceland from 2009 to 2023. His research is focused on saving, financial stability and growth, including the financial crisis in Iceland starting in 2008.  He co-authored the book Dynamism and co-edited Preludes to the Icelandic Financial Crisis (2011), The 2008 Global Financial Crisis in Retrospect (2019) and Fault Lines After COVID-19: Global Economic Challenges and Opportunities (2023).