## High-Quality Growth

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**Canonical URL:** [High-Quality Growth](https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/fandd/article/2024/06/books-arora.pdf)

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### Overview
- Daniel Susskind’s book aims to persuade a general audience that economic policy should broaden its focus from aiming primarily to boost GDP growth to considering the costs of such growth as well.
- Economic growth has brought "unprecedented gains in human prosperity and well-being across the world for over two centuries now."
- Governments treat GDP growth as a summary indicator associated with higher wealth, lower poverty, better health, and other benefits.
- Rising concerns about climate change, inequality, and social fragmentation have prompted scrutiny of the price of growth.

### Trade‑offs and policy instruments
- Key argument: policymakers must manage trade-offs between harnessing benefits of growth and reducing its costs.
- Quoted guidance: “It falls to us to confront the tradeoffs presented by growth’s promise and its price.”
- Policy instruments Susskind suggests include:
  - taxes and subsidies
  - laws and regulations
  - social narratives and norms
- Policy goal examples:
  - induce technological progress that is more environmentally friendly
  - provide incentives to foster growth that is less reliant on fossil fuels
- Where mitigation is not possible, Susskind argues that meeting climate and other social objectives could require slower growth.
- On decision authority: when choices among objectives are necessary, Susskind suggests leaving this choice “to the world of politics.”

### Political economy and preference heterogeneity
- Susskind frames arguments in terms of actions “we” should do, which may assume shared interests.
- Practical difficulty: people’s preferences about the balance between growth and other objectives differ sharply across and within countries, in both the developed and the developing world.
- Polarized environments make finding a common view particularly hard.
- The book does not discuss a framework for how policy should take account of these preference differences in determining trade-offs; these are noted as possible subjects for future work.

### Relation to existing economic thinking and IMF perspectives
- Some content will not be new to economists familiar with trade-offs between growth and other objectives.
- The IMF has incorporated climate change into its work relatively recently, but has long recognized the importance of the quality of growth.
- Historical IMF reference: In 1994, then-Managing Director Michel Camdessus urged a need for “high-quality growth that . . . is sustainable, reduces poverty and distributional inequality, respects human freedom and national cultures, and protects the environment.”

### Assessment and contribution
- Susskind’s synthesis is described as a useful addition to the public discussion of growth in a longer-term context.
- Memorable line preserved: “We must treasure the future as much as [we] revere the past.”

### Book metadata
- Title: GROWTH A History and a Reckoning
- Author: Daniel Susskind
- Publisher: Belknap Press
- Location: Cambridge, MA
- Year: 2024
- Length: 304 pp.
- Price: $29.95

*Vivek Arora; F&D, JUNE 2024.*

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_Source: https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/fandd/article/2024/06/books-arora.pdf_