Extensive Growth, in economics, is based on the expansion of the quantity of inputs in order to increase the quantity of outputs, opposite to that of intensive growth. Thus, extensive growth is likely to be subject to diminishing returns. It is therefore often viewed as having no effect on per-capita magnitudes in the long-run.
Reliance on extensive growth can be undesirable in the long-run because it exhausts resources. To maintain economic growth in the long-run, especially on a per-capita basis, it is good for an economy to grow intensively; for example, by improvements in technology or organisation, thereby increasing the production possibilities frontier of the economy.
Famous quotes containing the words extensive and/or growth:
“There is a patent office at the seat of government of the universe, whose managers are as much interested in the dispersion of seeds as anybody at Washington can be, and their operations are infinitely more extensive and regular.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“That land is like an Eagle, whose young gaze
Feeds on the noontide beam, whose golden plume
Floats moveless on the storm, and in the blaze
Of sunrise gleams when Earth is wrapped in gloom;
An epitaph of glory for the tomb
Of murdered Europe may thy fame be made,
Great People! as the sands shalt thou become;
Thy growth is swift as morn, when night must fade;
The multitudinous Earth shall sleep beneath thy shade.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)