Modern Structural Economic Dynamics in the Short and the Long Run

During several decades and until the end of the 1990s, the theory of structural economic dynamics has been absent in the field of so-called mainstream economic analysis. The literature included only either empirically oriented contributions or developments that were related to so-called critical theoretical approaches of structural change. At the end of the twentieth century, however, mainstream economic theorists changed this situation and began to investigate the field of structural dynamics, often using the Solovian theory of economic growth. During the last two decades, they contributed to change substantially the state of the theory of structural change. This contribution first provides an assessment of the advances realized by these theorists. It then confronts these advances with the so-called alternative or critical theoretical approaches of structural dynamics—namely, Luigi Pasinetti's contribution and “evolutionary” approaches—in order to provide a more complete picture of structural dynamics in the short and the long run.