Endogenous Aggregate Elasticity of Substitution

In the literature studying aggregate economies the aggregate elasticity of substitution (AES) between capital and labor is often treated as a constant or “deep” parameter. This view contrasts with the conjecture put forward by Arrow et al. (1961) that AES evolves over time and changes with the process of economic development. This paper evaluates this conjecture in a simple dynamic multi-sector growth model, in which AES is endogenously determined. Our findings support the conjecture, and in particular demonstrate that AES tends to be positively related to the state of economic development, a result consistent with recent empirical findings.

CAN TRANSITION DYNAMICS EXPLAIN THE INTERNATIONAL OUTPUT DATA?

This paper studies the transition dynamics predictions of an R&D-based growth model, and evaluates their performance in explaining income disparities across nations. We find that the fraction of the observed cross-country income variation explained by the transitional dynamics of the model is as large as the one accounted by existing steady-state level regressions. Our results suggest that the traditional view of a world in which nations move along their distinct balanced-growth paths is as likely as the one in which countries move along adjustment paths toward a common (very long-run) steady state.Transition Dynamics; Income Disparities; Growth.

IS THE SPEED OF CONVERGENCE A GOOD PROXY FOR THE TRANSITIONAL GROWTH PATH?

This paper compares transitional dynamics in two alternative R&D non-scale growth models; one includes endogenous human capital, whereas the other does not. We show that focusing on the speed of convergence to discriminate between the two models can be misleading. Our analysis suggests that a better alternative to discriminate between different growth theories is studying the whole adjustment path predicted by them. In addition, we find that the introduction of human capital makes the speed of convergence predicted by the model much less sensitive to exogenous shocks. This last result offers theoretical support to the similar convergence speeds estimated by the literature in different samples.Convergence, R&D, human capital, asymptotic speed, transitional dynamics