ultimate engine of growth was thedivision of
labour, the increasing elaboration of which
drives productivity, which in turn determines
growth (or the ‘size of the market’). Larger
marketswould sustain higher rates of growth,
and therefore growth would continue indefin-
itely. Malthus, for his part, was much more
pessimistic. He argued that the human popu-
lation would expand geometrically, while the
supply of land (and thereforefood) could only
grow slowly, resulting not only in a slowing
rate of growth, but in catastrophic vulnerabil-
ity topovertyandfamine(seemalthusian
model). Karl Marx also identified limits to the
long-run rate of growth, caused in his analysis
by the tendency of the rate of profit to fall and
rising class conflict (seemarxian economics).
For Marx, economic growth would also be
inherently unstable, following boom and bust
cycles, along with periodic (and gradually
increasing) bouts of unemployment (his
‘reserve army’ of labour). While Marx may
have over-estimated capitalism’s inherent
tendency to system failure, his forecast of sig-
nificant fluctuation in rates of growth, com-
bined with spatiallyuneven development, has
been borne out by the historical record (see
Bluestone and Harrison, 2001; Dume ́nil and
Le ́vy, 2004).
‘Growth is the pivot on whichindustrial
geographyturns’, Storper and Walker (1989,
p. 36) have argued, ‘and change is the only
constant in a world of persistent disequilib-
rium generated by the very nature of capitalist
development’. There is no evidence of sus-
tained convergence towards an equilibrium
or natural rate of growth; indeed, there is a
growing awareness that there are incipient, if
not urgent, social and environmentallimits to
growth. But the search for the ultimate eco-
nomic causes of growth continues. Often, it
appears that the simple fact of growth is taken
as a sign of causality. So, during the 1980s, the
relatively strong performance of the German
and Japanese economies prompted wide-
spread debate around the essence of these
apparently superior models of capitalism (see
Albert, 1993). During the 1990s, when eco-
nomic growth in both these economies fal-
tered and American growth surged, this was
held up as a validation of the brand of market-
driven, technology-intensive growth found
in the USA (Friedman, 2000 [1999]), the
generic form of which is often described as
neo-liberalism.
The late 1990s also witnessed the emer-
gence of ‘new growth theory’, developed by
economists Robert Lucas and Paul Romer,
which posits that the ultimate causes of growth
are endogenous (i.e. internal), the rate of
growth being a function of the aggregate stock
of capital (both human and physical),
together with the degree of technological
sophistication of theeconomy(e.g. the rate
of investment in research and development).
The policy implications of thismodel, which
include accelerating the long-term rate of
investment in technology and skills, have been
explored by Bluestone and Harrison (2001).
Here, they draw unfavourable contrasts with
the prevailing ideology of neo-liberal growth,
which favours short-term measures of market
performance and an ethos of governmental
deregulation.
Evidently, the search for the ultimate causes
of growth continues, and with some urgency.
Since the 1970s, growth rates across many of
the advanced industrial nations have declined
markedly, compared to the so-called ‘Golden
Age’ offordism, while the experience of less-
developed countries (with the notable excep-
tions of India and China) has been decidedly
uneven. This has led some to conclude that
the ‘Golden Age’ of high growth has given way
to a ‘Leaden Age’ of generally slower, and less
sustainable, economic growth. jpeSuggested reading
Dicken (2003, see especially ‘The changing
global economic map’, pp. 32–81); Scott and
Storper (2003); Storper and Walker (1989).economic integration A term often coupled
withglobalization, and typically associated
with claims about the virtues of free trade and
unregulated capitalmarkets. If one searches
for ‘economic integration’ on the website of
the international monetary fund (imf),
for example, some 3,350 documents appear –
the bulk of which are concerned with defining
the enabling conditions for expandingtrade
andcapitalflows, and documenting their
beneficial effects. Such claims have been sub-
ject to intense contestation, exemplified most
dramatically by the protests that erupted in
Seattle in November 1999 at the time of the
world trade organization(wto) ministerial
meeting (seeanti-globalization).
Some scholars question the extent and
novelty of contemporary global economic
integration, thereby casting doubt on efforts
to portray it as an inexorable linear process.
In the mid-1990s, for example, Hirst and
Thompson (1996) observed that the inter-
national economy was actuallylessopen and
integrated than in the early years of theGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_E Final Proof page 182 1.4.2009 3:17pmECONOMIC INTEGRATION