Economic Growth

This book deals mainly with economic growth, its interdependence with social capital, and the consequences of the “happy productive worker” hypothesis. A happy employee works better, earns more money, and as a result, his quality of life goes up. This feedback loop of productivity and happiness means that on the road to effective economic growth and development, man and his quality of life must be taken into consideration as a very important causative factor. The authors guess that the social capital (trust, helpfulness, fairness), family social capital (marriage, divorce, fertility), as well as income inequality are social determinants of the quality of life, sustainable growth and development. They all are characteristics of society’s harmonization. Most of these hypotheses have been verified using econometric models. We hope that such an approach will help to reduce the danger of the fetishization of economic growth. Likewise, the hypothesis on non-cyclical GDP fluctuations was considered, where efficiency of fixed capital investment depends on post bottlenecks. The book summarizes Jon Jacek Sztaudynger’s scientific work on economic growth over the last twenty years. It contains six published articles (co-authors: Ewa Ambroziak, Paweł Baranowski, Paweł Starosta, and Jan Marek Sztaudynger).