JÁNOSSY’S TRENDLINE THEORY IN THE LIGHT OF THE NEW GROWTH THEORY

Ferenc Jánossy was the most important Hungarian pioneer of surveys on long time series. In the 1960s he devised the famous theory of trendlines, which allowed him to forecast the great world economic recession of the 1970s a decade in advance. The best-known international authority on compiling historical time series is Angus Maddison, who prepared time series of the main demographic and macroeconomic indicators for 56 countries, from 1820 to the present day. Both scientists, whose survey method showed both a historical and a quantitative approach, reached the conclusion that human capital is the most important of production factors for securing long-term economic growth. The main purpose of this paper is to compare their results with the latest development, which is known as the “new growth theory”.