Energy, industry and politics: Energy, vested interests, and long-term economic growth and development

摘要: The article seeks to explicate a link between energy and long-term economic growth development. While in many ways intuitive, attempts at sketching theoretical frameworks explicating this have been few simplistic, typically limited technology economics. This emphasizes the importance of politics as well, fostering symbiosis dominant industries historical epoch system that enabled them flourish. framework combines Joseph Schumpeter Mancur Olson, emphasizing 1) structural change for development 2) vested interests. yields one proposition: In order rise, states must prevent interests from blocking change. States are unable do will get locked into yesterday's technologies, systems, effectively consigning themselves stagnation decline. A brief empirical section provides data 6 epochs (including present-day renewables) over period 250 years demonstrate usefulness approach. no exhaustive test, suggests countries prevented far more successful industry than those not.