This compendium of essays brings together some of William Baumol's most distinguished and acclaimed papers with some that are more rare, including a discussion of the growth and innovation mechanism that accounts for the unprecedented growth performance of the market economies. Amongst many other papers of note are a discussion of appropriate regulatory principles for privatized and deregulated firms, and a survey of the accomplishments of economists in the past century and the past millennium. This collection includes the following essays:Productivity Growth, Convergence and Welfare: What the Long-Run Data ShowOn the Possibility of Continuing Expansion of Finite ResourcesSocial Wants and Dismal Science: The Curious Case of the Climbing Costs of Health and TeachingTowards Microeconomics of Innovation: Growth Engine Hallmark of Market EconomicsUse of Antitrust to Subvert CompetitionPredation and the Logic of the Average Variable Cost Test.The papers engage with an eclectic range of issues and represent a vignette of the author's varied contributions to the economic literature.
