Mammoth text on economic growth

Daron Acemoglu, a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has published a draft version of his massive Introduction to Modern Economic Growth on the internet. The work looks highly technical but it does address three of the core questions in economic development (p25):

• Why are there such large differences in income per capita and worker productivity across countries?

• Why do some countries grow rapidly while others stagnate?

• What sustains economic growth over long periods of time and why did sustained growth start 200 years or so ago?