Macroeconomic dynamics survey: Endogenous growth theory and models: The first wave, 1952-1973

This paper surveys the first stage in the development of models of endogenous growth over the two decades between 1952 and 1973, including seminal works by Arrow, Frankel, Phelps, Uzawa, and others as faculty and graduate students who interacted in the Stanford-Chicago-MIT-Yale Nexus. The paper also deals with American Economic Association (AEA) and Econometric Society (ES) conference sessions over the period 1964-1968 on growth, technical progress, and innovations and with the contributions in the 1967 Shell volume, in addition to dissertations, working papers, and book chapters by those involved in the first wave over the period 1965-1973. Finally, the paper considers the initial efforts at building more sophisticated models based on technical progress, human capital, increasing returns and imperfect competition, and the incompatibility between increasing returns with competitive equilibrium.