"The most exciting field in economics during the past fifteen years has been that of economic growth. Economists are now beginning to find plausible answers to such profound questions as why some countries experienced rapid growth in the postwar era, while others stagnated; and why per capita income, which had been constant for most of human history, suddenly took off in the eighteenth century, the phenomenon known as the Industrial Revolution. In this book, Robert Lucas brings together several of his seminal papers on the subject, together with the Kuznets Lectures that he gave at Yale University, to present a coherent view of economic growth."--BOOK JACKET.