Pre-Class Assignment for Tuesday: 2026-01-27 :: Econ 196 :: Productivity & Technology
From candles to code & the brightness of modern prosperity: Malthus, LEDs, LLMs, & MOAR!…
From candles to code & the brightness of modern prosperity: Malthus, LEDs, LLMs, & MOAR!…
READING: Mandatory: This week, as I hunt for what the sweet spot is for reading for this class, I am assigning two articles:
Lee, Ronald. 2003. “The Demographic Transition: Three Centuries of Fundamental Change”. Journal of Economic Perspectives. 17:4 (Fall), pp. 167-90. <https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/089533003772034943Links to an external site.>.
Nordhaus, William. 1996, “Do Real-Output and Real-Wage Measures Capture Reality? The History of Lighting Suggests Not”. In Timothy Bresnahan & Robert Gordon, eds. The Economics of New Goods. Chicago: University of Chicago. <https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c6064/c6064.pdfLinks to an external site.>.
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ANSWER: the following five questions in the text-entry box (one-paragraph answers for each) at < https://bcourses.berkeley.edu/courses/1551896/assignments/9039498 >:
In 1800 the world’s population was about 925 million, and it had grown by 5% in the previous century. What would the world’s population be today had it continued to grow at that pace. And how much larger is the world’s actual population today?
Why, in Ron Lee’s estimation, did the demographic transition occur?
What does Ron Lee expect to happen to the level of the human population over the next century or two?
Why does William Nordhaus believe that the quantity of photons pumped out by artificial lighting is the right way to measure the production of the commodity “useful light”?
Do you buy Nordhaus’s argument that even though, in terms of our capability to produce necessities, we today are merely (merely!) sixteen times richer than our mediæval pre-industrial ancestors, in truth we are actually richer by many more orders of magnitude.
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both a teaching note and a meditation on how we measure prosperity. We run from a back‑of‑the‑envelope population projection, through Lee’s demographic transition, to Nordhaus’s photon‑based account of lighting.
The students largely buy Nordhaus’s claim that conventional real‑wage measures badly understate the gains in specific capabilities, while insisting that welfare is more than lumen‑hours and bandwidth. They instinctively worry about distribution, environment, and non‑market dimensions of welfare. The post uses their thinking as a springboard to ask how we should measure “useful” output
Perhaps getting them to do this arithmetic themselves—in Python, in Jupyter—may be the best way to teach what “technology” and “growth” actually mean in economic history.
Love the Bresnahan and Gordon article! How many candles are equivalent to a light bulb?
"Perhaps getting them to do this arithmetic themselves—in Python, in Jupyter—may be the best way to teach what “technology” and “growth” actually mean in economic history."
So just out of curiosity, how do you keep them from just using AI to do the arithmetic? Or asking AI to define what these terms mean? Or maybe AI is allowed in your courses? Also, you seem to be assuming that all Berkeley students know Python and/or Jupyter. Back in my day, barely 10% of college kids even knew BASIC. Have times changed that much? Is is reasonable to expect some valley girl who got into UC Berkeley due to rich parents to know Python? Or maybe some knowledge of computer software is a prerequisite for signing up for your course?