Land,technical progress and the falling rate of profit

The paper sets out a one sector growth model with a neoclassical production function in land and a capital–labour aggregate. If the elasticity of substitution between land and the capital–labour aggregate is less than one and if the rate of capital augmenting technical progress is strictly positive, then the rate of profit will fall to zero. This result holds regardless of the rate of land augmenting technical progress: no amount of technical advance in agriculture can stop the fall in the rate of profit. The paper also discusses the relation of this result to the classical and Marxist literature.     

Biased Technical Change and the Aggregate Production Function

This paper offers a classical model of biased technical change in the MarxRicardo tradition as a framework for theoretical and applied studies of growth. The observable data it generates would appear to an unsuspecting economist to be well-described by a neoclassical model with a static Cobb-Douglas production function, when in fact this production function describes only the technological history of the economy. The CobbDouglas form results from the capital-using, labour-saving bias of technical change. The model's trajectory in wage-profit space will lie along the displaced image of the neoclassical factor price frontier, in contradiction to marginal productivity theory. The Solow residual can be reinterpreted by the classical theory as a measure of the size of this displacement.     

Investment rates and the aggregate production function

In this paper we consider a simple version of the neoclassical growth model, and carry out an empirical analysis of the main determinants of aggregate investment across countries. The neoclassical growth model predicts that aggregate investment may be influenced by income growth, the capital income share, the relative price of capital, taxes, and other market distortions. We check these investment patterns for both OECD and non-OECD countries. We also decompose investment data into equipment and structures, and explore major factors affecting their relative prices. These empirical exercises shed light into the shape of the neoclassical production function.     

Existence and Stability of Steady State in an Augmented Solow Model with Multiple Capital Goods

This paper relaxes two assumptions on the traditional augmented Solow model: strict concavity of production functions and dual capital goods. It generalizes traditional conclusions of the Solow model by demonstrating that neoclassical properties of a production function are sufficient for the existence and global stability of the steady state in the augmented Solow model with multiple capital goods. Moreover, we prove necessity of essentiality of inputs for a neoclassical production function and generalize the golden rule of capital accumulation.     

Was there a Marxian bias in Austrian manufacturing? Evidence on the direction of technical change, 1978–1994

This paper presents a study of the bias of technical change for 20 industries of the Austrian manufacturing sector for the period 1978 to 1994 using empirical methods derived from both classical and neoclassical economics. Overall, the results suggest that the technical bias in Austrian manufacturing did not follow a Marxian pattern. Estimates based on the classical framework suggest that 5 out of the 20 industries show a Marxian bias over the period 1978–1994. Evidence based on a neoclassical CES production function is provided and critically evaluated.     

C.E. Ferguson and the Neoclassical Theory of Capital: A Matter of Faith

In 1969 the American neoclassical economist C.E. Ferguson wrote that reliance on neoclassical aggregate production and distribution theory is a ‘matter of faith’ to be sorted out (he says ‘answered’) by econometricians. Ferguson was criticized on both sides of the debate for invoking this religious metaphor. Using the methodological framework of A.J. Cohen & G.C. Harcourt (2005), Introduction: capital theory controversy: scarcity, production, equilibrium, and time, in: A. Cohen, G.C. Harcourt & C. Bliss (Eds) Capital Theory, 3 Vols. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, this paper argues that faith plays a recurring role in all capital controversies and especially in modern theories of growth that rely wholesale on the aggregate production function. Ferguson's faith proves to be much more insightful than previously recognized.     

The CES Production Function,the accounting identity,and Occam's razor

This paper reconsiders the argument that empirical estimations of aggregate production functions may be interpreted merely as statistical artefact. The reason is that Occam's razor, or Herbert Simon's principle of parsimony, suggests that the aggregate production function, together with the side equations derived from the usual neoclassical optimizing conditions, simply reflect the underlying accounting identity that value added definitionally equals the wage bill plus total profits. This argument is illustrated with respect to the empirical evidence presented by Arrow, Chenery, Minhas and Solow (Review of Economics and Statistics, XLIII, 225-50, 1961) and which led them to derive the Constant Elasticity of Substitution aggregate production function. It is shown that their results are more parsimoniously explained with reference to the underlying accounting identity than to any technological relationship.     

DEPRECIATION, OBSOLESCENCE AND THE ROLE OF CAPITAL IN GROWTH ACCOUNTING

Maurice Scott has argued that the neoclassical production function and growth accounting are fundamentally flawed as tools for understanding the growth process. If the role of capital were correctly evaluated, then (he argues) the famous 'residual' of growth accounting would disappear. Contrary to these claims, this paper seeks to show that growth accounting gives correct answers to interesting questions, even when all technical progress is embodied in new capital goods and even when depreciation is entirely due to obsolescence.     

GLOBAL TRANSFER OF ARMS TECHNOLOGY AND ITS IMPACT ON ECONOMIC GROWTH

The Malmquist index is used to measure the impact of military technology transfer on economic growth. This index can be decomposed into two components: efficiency change and technical change. Given the aggregate production function, the effect of technology diffusion on growth is measured by efficiency change. The shift in aggregate production function due to innovative activities is measured by technical change. An analysis of 16 American and European countries over the period 1978-1994 reveals that the total impact of arms trade on growth, measured in terms of the Malmquist index, varies across countries. Contrary to common belief the findings of this study do not suggest that industrial countries have more efficient utilization offoreign military technology than do developing countries. The evidence also shows that the difference in total impact among countries is primarily due to the differences in efficiency change, not technical change.     

Measuring total productivity change

This paper examines several ways of measuring the aggregate rate of technical change: with the aggregate production function; in a disaggregated framework of the multisector model; and with the net social production possibility frontier or the generalized factor price frontier. Conditions under which all three approaches are mutually compatible are determined.     

LONG-RUN GROWTH PROJECTIONS AND THE AGGREGATE PRODUCTION FUNCTION: A SURVEY OF MODELS USED BY THE U.S. GOVERNMENT

This paper examines the theory and method behind the long-run growth projections of four prominent models used within the U.S. government. The growth models of the Congressional Budget Ofice, the Social Security Administration, the Office of Management and Budget, and the General Accounting Office are all firmly based on the neoclassical framework of an aggregate production function, but several practical dfferences exist. Most notably, the CBO and GAO models endogenize capital accumulation, while the SSA and OMB simply assume that labor productivity growth will continue at historical rates. Although recent endogenous growth theory and the expanding empirical literature on cross-sectional variation emphasize alternative factors, the US. government agencies remain appropriately committed to the traditional, neoclassical framework as a tool for projecting long-run growth.     

Energy,knowledge and economic growth

It is argued that the explosive growth experienced in much of the World since the middle of the 19th Century is due to the exploitation and use of fossil fuels which, in turn, was made possible by capital good innovations that enabled this source of energy to be used effectively. Economic growth is viewed as the outcome autocatalytic co-evolution of energy use and the application of new knowledge associated with energy use. It is argued that models of economic growth should be built from innovation diffusion processes, unfolding in history, rather than from a timeless aggregate production function. A simple ‘evolutionary macroeconomic’ model of economic growth is developed and tested using almost two centuries of British data. The empirical findings strongly support the hypothesis that growth has been due to the presence of a ‘super-radical innovation diffusion process’ following the industrial deployment of fossil fuels on a large scale in the 19th Century. Also, the evidence suggests that large and sustained movements in energy prices have had a very significant long term role to play.     

Two‐level CES Production Technology in the Solow and Diamond Growth Models*

The two‐level CES aggregate production function—that nests a CES into another CES function—has recently been used extensively in theoretical and empirical applications of macroeconomics. We examine the theoretical properties of this production technology and establish existence and stability conditions of steady states under the Solow and Diamond growth models. It is shown that in the Solow model the sufficient condition for a steady state is fulfilled for a wide range of substitution parameter values. This is in sharp contrast with the two‐factor Solow model, where only an elasticity of substitution equal to one is sufficient to guarantee the existence of a steady state. In the Diamond model, multiple equilibria can occur when the aggregate elasticity of substitution is lower than the capital share. Moreover, it is shown that for high initial levels of capital and factor substitutability, the effect of a further increase in a substitution parameter on the steady state depends on capital–skill complementarity.     

Unhealthy Accumulation: The Globalization of Health Care Privatization

The scepticism of economists—mainstream and heterodox—towards "new economy" ideas goes beyond the indignation of long-established traditions being told to rewrite their basic rules. With its emphasis on trade through interand intra-corporate networks, the "new economy" presents a model of exchange very different from that used by mainstream (neoclassical) economics. Its assurance of equality within the network, like neoclassical economists' equality before the market, is attained only by ignoring the power imbalances built into the new network forms. The enhanced "consumer sovereignty" associated with recent technological change, deregulation and trade integration is shown to be just as open to market power abuses as were consumers in the traditional economy. Rather than representing a break with the past, recent structural changes in highincome economies are argued to continue a long-running trend for consumption and production to be spatially and temporally separated, so that the individual pleasures of the first can counterbalance the collective pressures of the second. Producers remain in control of most supply chains, and the intensification and deskilling of consumption reinforces rather than reverses these same processes in production, by promoting longer work hours and closer pay-performance links.     

General Equilibrium Effects of Green Technological Progress

This paper demonstrates that technological progress in production of renewable energy can influence the extraction path of fossil fuels indirectly by a change in the equilibrium interest rate. We show in a simple model that the indirect effect can be so strong that first-period or even aggregate extraction levels rise with green technological progress, contrary to popular expectations.     

Collectivization of Chinese agricultural production, 1952–1957: A land-saving organizational change

This paper applies an aggregate agricultural production function in the analysis of the change in grain production in China in 1952–1957. It shows that in that period of radical institutional transformation the marginal rate of substitution of land for labor rose sharply. Its economic effect can be understood as a land-saving organizational change with consequences similar to a disembodied land-saving technical change: rapid decline in the marginal product of land, attributed to a slow pace of increase in complementary inputs and rapid intensification of farming; and a steep rise in the marginal product of labor, directly related to its better utilization.     

Is money an omitted variable in the production function? Some further results

In recent years, numerous studies have emphasized the role of real balances in the production function in terms of money being useful: as an intermediate good; as liquid reserves for investment; and also serving as a link between aggregate supply and the nominal interest rate. In this paper we report new Canadian empirical evidence regarding the important role of money in the production process of aggregate manufacturing industries based on a flexible translog cost function approach. In general, our results support the hypothesis that money is an important factor in the production function and that there are potential supply side effects of a change in the interest rate.     

The aggregate neoclassical theory of distribution and the concept of a given value of capital: towards a more general critique

The aim of this article is to show the weakness of the neo-Ricardian critique of the aggregate neoclassical theory of distribution which affirms the intrinsic inability of this theory to describe a stable equilibrium. The article shows that within the aggregate neoclassical framework both the supply curve for capital, founded on the concept of a given value of capital, and the demand curve for capital are each, and for different reasons, without any appreciable economic meaning. The kind of equilibrium determined by these curves is economically irrelevant. The article stresses the consequence that capital reversal and reswitching are unimportant for the critique of the aggregate neoclassical theory of distribution.     

Nachfragefunktionen für die Produktionsfaktoren Arbeit und Kapital

Summary In this paper we present dynamic factor demand functions for labour and capital, and the underlying production function for the Austrian economy. Our approach is neoclassical. By definition, the production function is of the Cobb-Douglas type; experiments with a CES production function were not successful. Our empirical results look very plausible. The adjustement speeds, the output and price elasticities of both factor demand functions, as well as the parameters of the underlying production function are of a order of magnitude highly compatible with neoclassical theory.     

Patterns of technical change: a geometrical analysis using the wage–profit rate schedule

In this paper we examine some basic stylized facts of economic growth according to the modern restatement of the classical theory of income distribution. In particular, we make use of a wage–profit frontier in order to explore the patterns of technical change experienced by a set of 18 industrialized economies, during the last 40 years. Our main purpose is to document the evolution of technical change. Using empirical evidence from the Italian industry, we also make an attempt to provide an explanation to data from a classical perspective, alternative to the standard approach founded on the aggregate production function.