“Dan Steinbock has delivered us a riveting account of the rise and fall of modern economic growth. He puts forth an original historical account and theoretical perspective on the stages of economic growth that moves us beyond Western narratives as it centers the Global South. He shows how inequality, external intervention, and the climate emergency undermine the prospects for long-term growth and point us to a precarious future in the absence of radical policy changes. Part prognosis and part warning, erudite yet accessible, this tour de force on the future of the global economy will be of great interest to economists, social scientists, and policymakers.”
——WLLIAM I. ROBINSON, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Global Studies and Latin American Studies, University of California at Santa Barbara, and author of Pax Silica: The New Ruling Class

★What’s the common denominator underpinning ongoing global turmoil: affordability crises, youth protests, proxy conflicts, trade protectionism, populism, migration crises, and extreme weather? Simply put: The end of modern economic growth.
★Challenging conventional wisdom, the book covers all major economies and its time span ranges from 1500 to projections up to 2100. It is about missed opportunities and the attendant colossal economic and human costs.
★It also addresses viable alternative futures that could be more inclusive and sustainable.

In the 15th century, colonization opened the world markets for the nascent West's plunder. But without systematic technological innovation, per capita income remained low. With the rise of capitalism, the constraints on growth were dismantled. But this familiar story of modernization has a darker side.

With the rise of Western modernity, inequality soared within and between economies. The first countries to colonize were the first to industrialize, and the early industrializers were the first to globalize. Conversely, those areas that were colonized in the Americas, Asia, the Middle East and Africa have been late to industrialize and only a few have begun to globalize.

The net effect has been an immense net transfer of wealth from the Global South to the West and huge disparities between these regions. To sustain this supremacy, the West has consistently used external interventions to undermine sovereign states and extract their resources, in both processes unleashing extreme climate change.

This book connects the unacknowledged dots behind the standard narratives.
The Prologue offers a contrarian introduction to the rise and fall of modern economic growth.
Part I outlines the growth dialectic from colonization to industrialization and globalization. These include the West's external interventions, from coups and regime changes to full demodernization. It highlights the colossal economic, human and climate costs of this trajectory.
Part II identifies the true stages of economic growth from Malthusian stagnation to industrialization, to the market economy and the slow transition to sustainability. It demystifies the classic modernization narrative in empirical detail, subverting the standard narrative.
The Epilogue explains how the era of “economic miracles” is not just stagnating but coming to an end.

Dr. Dan Steinbock is an internationally-renowned expert on the multipolar world economy and the founder of the global consultancy Difference Group Ltd. He has served in the India China America Institute (US), the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (China), and the EU Center (Singapore) and he has cooperated with several other think-tanks around the world. He has lectured around the world and consulted for multinational companies, multilateral development banks, government agencies, intergovernmental organizations like the OECD, and regional trading blocs, such as the EU.