The growth of the services sector has profoundly transformed developed societies, their economic characteristics, their occupational structures, and even their political priorities and value systems. No comprehensive theory of his growth exists, but for three centuries a number of major economists and social scientists have sought to analyze and explain its characteristics, dimensions and consequences. This book is the first to survey and evaluate these theoretical contributions on services growth, from the mercantillists and classicists to contemporary works, those beginning with Fisher,...