Introduction to Modern Economic Growth In contrast, the current book does not cover any of the short-run topics in macroeconomics, but provides a thorough and rigorous introduction to what I view to be the core of macroeconomics Therefore, the second purpose of the book is to provide a first graduate-level course in modern macroeconomics The topic selection is designed to strike a balance between the two purposes of the book Chapters 1, and introduce many of the salient features of the process of economic growth and the sources of cross-country differences in economic performance Even though these chapters cannot justice to the large literature on economic growth empirics, they provide a sufficient background for students to appreciate the set of issues that are central to the study of economic growth and also a platform for a further study of this large literature Chapters 5-7 provide the conceptual and mathematical foundations of modern macroeconomic analysis Chapter provides the microfoundations for much of the rest of the book (and for much of modern macroeconomics), while Chapters and provide a quick but relatively rigorous introduction to dynamic optimization Most books on macroeconomics or economic growth use either continuous time or discrete time exclusively I believe that a serious study of both economic growth and modern macroeconomics requires the student (and the researcher) to be able to go between discrete and continuous time and choose whichever one is more convenient or appropriate for the set of questions at hand Therefore, I have deviated from this standard practice and included both continuous time and discrete time material throughout the book Chapters 2, 8, and 10 introduce the basic workhorse models of modern macroeconomics and traditional economic growth, while Chapter 11 presents the first generation models of sustained (endogenous) economic growth Chapters 12-15 cover models of technological progress, which are an essential part of any modern economic growth course Chapter 16 generalizes the tools introduced in Chapter to stochastic environments Using these tools, Chapter 17 presents the canonical stochastic growth model, which is the foundation of much of modern macroeconomics (though it is often left out of economic growth courses) This chapter also includes a discussion of the canonical Real Business Cycle model Chapter 18 covers another major workhorse model of modern macroeconomics, the neoclassical growth model with incomplete markets As well as the famous Bewley-Aiyagari model, this chapter discusses a number of other approaches to modeling the interaction between incomplete markets and economic growth Chapters 19-23 cover a range of topics that are sometimes left out of economic growth textbooks These include models of technology adoption, technology diffusion, appropriate technology, interaction between international trade and technology, structural change, poverty traps, inequality, and population growth These xii