Ritenour rethinks economic prosperity in new book

Grove City College Economics Professor Dr. Shawn Ritenour hopes his latest book will provide readers with an understanding of the sources of economic prosperity and how they must work together to enable human flourishing.

In “The Economics of Prosperity; Rethinking Economic Growth and Development,” Ritenour presents a general theory of the economics of prosperity that draws on Austrian economic thinking. It looks beyond merely identifying various isolated causes of economic growth and development to describe and explain the process of economic progress.

“I wrote it because I was unsatisfied with most treatises and articles that presented a theory of economic growth and/or development,” Ritenour said. “To the extent that the conventional economic literature was helpful, it was rather ad hoc and disjointed. What I desired to do was to develop realistic, general theory of economic progress that understands human action as the source of all economic phenomena.”

“I hope that my readers gain an analytical understanding of the sources of economic prosperity, but also and very importantly, how all of the sources of prosperity must work together in an economic order for economic progress that facilitates human flourishing to occur. It emphasizes the role of the entrepreneur using market prices in economic calculation allowing for coordination of an economic order facilitating sustainable economic prosperity,” he said.

“It is a book on economic theory, institutions, and policy, but it is written in English not numbers and with relatively little ‘econospeak’,” Ritenour said.

Ritenour’s book brings together economic principles related to production, exchange, the market division of labor, capital, technology, entrepreneurship, and economic calculation, and a further understanding of how different institutional settings and specific policies all affect the process of economic progress. It also provides a helpful critique of modern growth theory.

“The Economics of Prosperity; Rethinking Economic Growth and Development” is part of Elgar’s New Thinking in Political Economy series. It is available online at www.e-elgar.com.

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