ABSTRACT
Growth has long been a central concern for economists and other social scientists. Without much controversy one can say that poverty has been and continues to be one of the greatest sources of human misery the world over. A direct means by which to allay poverty is through economic growth. The first contemporarily recognizable approach to theorizing on the determinants of economic growth was undertaken by Alfred Marshall. Marshall, unlike his major contemporaries, focused upon growth. Neoclassical growth theory took its modern form in the 1950s with the work of Robert Solow and Trevor Swan. Neoclassical growth theorists defend their approach from critiques such as that of Quah, by noting that tests of conditional convergence are not meant to test income distributions around the globe. The approach is intended to test for decreasing returns to capital, and whether growth patterns favor neoclassical growth theory instead of endogenous growth theory.
