ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by considering the question of growth— and American growth in particular—in its formal, academic setting. The leading sectors have certain direct effects on other sectors by setting up a powerful effective demand for new inputs; and they provide to the economy a wide range of external economic effects which, as it were, spill over outside the directly affected sectors. These leading growth sectors sometimes also serve as leading sectors in business cycle expansions; that is, effective demand is sharply increased by the direct and multiplier effects of bringing new production functions into the capital stock. The phase of growth which then emerged has been dominated down to by the diffusion to the American population of new patterns of consumption, a new way of life built on the mass automobile and the single family house in the suburbs.
