Masoud Movahed is a doctoral candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He contributes to, among others, Foreign Affairs, Harvard International Review, Yale Journal of International Affairs, World Economic Forum and Al Jazeera English.
There have been numerous growth models presented by economists since the early emergence of capitalism as a new form of organizing economic resources. Broadly, the growth models can be divided into three main categories: 1) the Smithian theories of development that place the division of labor and the ‘invisible’ hands of the market as the engine of growth and dynamism; 2) the Marxian theories of development that place profits maximization motive and constant re-investment of capital and, of course, access to reserve army of labor as the purse-strings of growth in any capitalist society; 3) the Schumpeterian theories of development, which suggest that the main determinants of economic growth are technical change and production of knowledge and innovations, which themselves are resulted from entrepreneurial investments. Quibbles in the literature notwithstanding, the broad trend is unmistakable that most of the later growth models that economists bequeath to us can be subsumed under these classifications.