Allyn Young and the Development of Growth Theory

The purpose of this note is two‐fold. One is to pay a belated tribute to an old teacher of mine, Allyn Young. The other is a perhaps overly ambitious attempt to supplement the excellent review of growth theory of 1964, by arguing that there is a direct line between neo‐classical growth theory as Young left it in 1928 and present day theorising; a link, I fear, that is not generally recognised. What originality it may possess lies in expanding upon the implications of Young's argument. But in such a wide and important field as growth, a somewhat different synthesis of existing but scattered ideas seems worth attempting.