Dr. Lant Pritchett is the RISE Research Director at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford.

A number of developing countries (including India) have enjoyed extended episodes of rapid economic growth, but there are relatively few countries that have achieved high national development in the four dimensions of: productive economy, responsive polity, highly capable state organizations, and equal treatment of all citizens, which has been shown to be an empirically necessary and sufficient condition for high levels of human wellbeing. This raises the question "why does growth stop?" While there has been a fair amount of attention to the economic reasons why growth stops, this lecture examines the reasons why growth stops (and even reverses) due to tensions between economic progress and the other dimensions of national development, particularly politics and state capability.