This major three volume work provides a comprehensive and authoritative selection of the most important articles and papers on growth theory. Volume I focuses on theories that attempt to explain the stylized facts of growth. Volume II includes the most important articles on normative models of the growth process. Volume III integrates the positive analysis found in the first volume with the welfare approach found in the second volume. Taken together, these volume depict the development of growth models from the early aggregative theory without explicitly optimizing agents to the current practice of formulating growth models with an explicit microeconomic foundation for consumption and investment decisions. Both the questions and methods of the new equilibrium approach to growth theory are adapted from optimal growth theory. In this sense, the descriptive and normative theories are intertwined and elements of both points of view may be found in each of the three volumes. Included in these three volumes are seminal contributions by Nobel Prize winners such as Robert Solow, Paul Samuelson and Kenneth Arrow.

Robert Becker and Edwin Burmeister - two leading economists in the field - have prepared a reference collection that will be indispensable to any student, researcher or instructor with an interest in the theory of economic growth.