Evolutionary Growth Theory

Abstract

We begin by outlining competing stylised facts about economic growth and then set out the relations between structural change and aggregate productivity growth contingent on the evolution of the pattern of demand. We then introduce the concept of an industry level technical progress function and show how rates of technical progress are mutually determined as a consequence of increasing returns and the changing distribution of demand. We next sketch a macroeconomic closure of the evolutionary process, expressed in terms of the mutual determination of rates of capital accumulation and rates of productivity growth. In the final section we elaborate upon the restless nature of innovation-based economic growth and the conditions under which Nicholas Kaldori?½s stylised facts are compatible with the Clark-Kuznets stylised facts. We may summarise our perspective quite sharply. What distinguishes modern capitalism is not only its order imposing properties that lead to the self organisation of the economy, but also the self transforming properties that create wealth from knowledge and, in so doing, induce the further development of useful knowledge. The manner in which self-organisation and self-transformation interact in terms of adjustments to the composition of demand, as well as the structure of technology and production, is at the core of this essay