Its aim is providing the students with an understanding of the historical stylized facts, causal determinants and evaluative techniques related to the (long-run) economic-growth experience of different sets of countries. The main analytical tool will be the study of continuous-time dynamical systems (optimal control). An introduction should be able to get the students acquainted with the successes and failures of different international organizations (IMF, World Bank,...) to adopt recent strategies of economic development, sometimes based on a "panacea" (like physical or human-capital investment, fertility reductions, debt relief,...) that resulted not to be like that, since its implementation did not respond to economic incentives. An overview of both neoclassical and endogenous-growth theory will follow, taking care of exploring the most recent explanations of the growth process at the world level and in the very long-run, often based on the non-rivalry of technological knowledge and endogenous fertility rates. Finally, a tentative topic will be related to the final demise of the class-struggle. This happened once human-capital became the scarce cumulative factor instead of physical capital, and entrepreneurial elites decided to equip workers with the necessary tools to get educated and, eventually, become themselves capitalists. (Galor and Moav)
