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Clock
10 minutes
High School - College
41 classes this year
Subjects: AP Economics Economics
Topic: Economic Growth

How people have made artificial light over the past 4,000 years reflects the history of economic growth in the world. One economist has explored the cost of light, starting in ancient Babylonian times and ending in the 1990s. He discovered that for most of the past four millennia, light was very expensive. Then, in the past 200 years, scientific advances caused the price of light to drop precipitously, and economies grew with a speed and intensity unknown before. Listen to hear how light became cheap and how its price demonstrates how economic growth happens.

View Voluntary National Content Standards in Economics

Content Standard 15: Economic Growth

Grade 8 Benchmarks

3. Technological change results from an advance in knowledge leading to new and improved goods and services and better ways of producing them.

4. Increases in productivity can result from advances in technology or increases in physical or human capital.

Grade 12 Benchmarks

2. Historically, economic growth that raises per capita output has been a vehicle for alleviating poverty and raising standards of living.

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