Kaldor-Verdoorn Law Research Articles

The Efficient Triangle: Export Persistence, Human Capital, and Productivity

ABSTRACT The impact of exports on productivity is a central theme in macroeconomics, explored in both the ‘learning by exporting’ and ‘Kaldor-Verdoorn law’ literature. We utilize a novel dataset of Italian firm microdata to build an empirical model examining the effect of persistent exporting on firm productivity. The model endogenizes a firm's export propensity using a probit specification that enables us to derive consistent estimates of the impact of exporting on productivity. In addition, we use the share of highly educated workers as a proxy of human capital to test the ability of persistently exporting firms to learn. This impact is derived using a biprobit specification, which enables us to endogenize the joint probability of being a continuously exporting firm while highly endowed with a skilled workforce. The results strongly support the hypothesis that persistent exporters show a significant productivity premium compared to occasional exporters. Moreover, the workforce's education level further increases productivity, with results supporting the hypothesis that highly educated shares of a firm's workforce enhance the ability to learn.

Increasing returns and labor markets in a predator–prey model

The purpose of this work is to study the joint interaction of three founding elements of modern capitalism, namely endogenous technical change, income distribution, and labor markets, within a low-dimensional nonlinear dynamic setup extending the Goodwin model. Going beyond the conservative structure typical of the predator–prey model, we insert an endogenous source of energy, namely a Kaldor–Verdoorn (KV) increasing returns specification, that feeds the dynamics of the system over the long run and in that incorporates a transition to an (anti)-dissipative framework. The qualitatively dynamics and ample array of topological structures reflect a wide range of Kaldorian stylized facts, as steady productivity growth and constant shares of income distribution. The intensity of learning regimes and wage sensitivity to unemployment allow to mimic some typical traits of both Competitive and Fordist regimes of accumulation, showing the relevance of the demand-side engine, represented by the KV law, within an overall supply-side framework. High degrees of learning regimes stabilize the system and bring it out of an oscillatory trap. Even under regimes characterized by low degrees of learning, wage rigidity is able to stabilize the business cycle fluctuations and exert a positive effect on productivity growth.

Economic Growth and Technological Progress in Developing Economies: Okun and Kaldor-Verdoorn Effects in China and India (1991–2019)

ABSTRACT The nature of the causal relationship between economic growth and technological progress has been open to debate. The conventional view following Solow’s 1957 seminal discussion is that growth is supply-constrained and determined by exogenous technological progress. An alternative view preceding Solow is referred to as the Kaldor-Verdoorn Law, and emphasizes the importance of demand-side factors in determining technological progress and productivity growth. This paper looks at the evidence for the Kaldor-Verdoorn Law in China and India, two fast-growing Asian countries that have been central in the process of globalization. It also estimates the influence of short-term cyclical fluctuations associated with changes in the unemployment rate, or the Okun effect on their productivity growth. The results appear to provide support for the Kaldor-Verdoorn Law or the notion that technical change is the result, and not the fundamental cause of economic growth. The estimated Okun effects are small and insignificant in both countries, suggesting that cyclical influences on productivity growth may be less significant in developing countries that are growing rapidly and do not (at least till the recent pandemic) experience the conventional recessions of mature economies, but only slowdowns in rapid economic growth. The results therefore provide some support for the importance of demand-led regimes in rapidly growing developing countries.

The Kaldor–Verdoorn law at the age of robots and AI

This paper contributes to the literature around the Kaldor–Verdoorn law and analyses the impact of robotisation on the channels through which the law shapes labour-productivity growth. We start with a simple evolutionary reinterpretation of the law that combines Kaldorian and neo-Schumpeterian arguments. We then apply a GMM estimator to a panel of 17 industries in 25 OECD capitalist economies for the period 1990–2018. After elaborating on the general evidence of the evolutionary interpretation of the law, the estimates suggest a positive influence from robotisation: a higher robot density strengthens both the channel that ties labour productivity dynamics with mechanisation, and the one connected with the general advancement of science and technology which joins productivity to aggregate demand. This overall result is robust to several specifications of the underlying econometric model. Moreover, we find some evidence of technological unemployment out of the macroeconomic factor. Results agree with the empirical literature that suggests different impacts from robotisation on the basis of the level of economic activity considered.

Autonomous demand and technical change: exploring the Kaldor–Verdoorn law on a global level

This paper aims to explain labour productivity through the lens of a Kaldorian perspective. To assess the relationship between output, demand, capital accumulation, and labour productivity, we apply Panel Structural Vector Autoregressive (P-SVAR) modelling to a dataset of 52 countries observed over a long-time span as provided by the Penn World Table. Findings validate the Kaldorian perspective and show that demand shocks—measured by government expenditures and exports—produce positive and persistent effects on labour productivity. Findings are confirmed even when the full sample is broken down to consider developed and developing countries separately.

Economic growth as a double-edged sword: The pollution-adjusted Kaldor-Verdoorn effect

There is evidence that pollution concentration impacts negatively on labor productivity, which has implications for the well-know Kaldor-Verdoorn law. While the growth rate of labor productivity varies positively with the growth rate of output, the growth rate of pollution concentration also varies positively with the latter. An increase in pollution concentration leading to environmental degradation might thus offset the productivity-enhancing effect of output growth. This paper explores such a double-edged sword feature of output growth in a demand-led macrodynamic framework having pollution concentration as a further influence on the conflict over the functional distribution of income. The stability of the environment-economy system hinges on how output growth varies with the functional distribution of income. When output growth is wage-led, the balanced growth path is unstable. When output growth is profit-led, stability is possible, but the system undergoes fluctuations as it converges to the balanced growth path.

What to make of the Kaldor-Verdoorn law?

Abstract The Kaldor-Verdoorn law refers to a positive but less than one-for-one causal relationship between the growth rates of output and labour productivity. While empirical research has found that the Kaldor-Verdoorn coefficient lies between 0 and 1, the interpretation of this finding remains unclear. In this paper, we present a model to derive the Kaldor-Verdoorn law. Our results show that the Kaldor-Verdoorn coefficient is jointly determined by the elasticity of factor substitution, labour supply elasticity, the profit share and the increasing returns to scale (or demand-induced technical change) parameter. Hence, estimated Kaldor-Verdoorn coefficients cannot be used, on their own, to infer the presence of aggregate increasing returns to scale—with the exception of the benchmark case of Leontief Production technology (and steady-state analysis coupled with the assumption of Cobb-Douglas production technology). We also report a surprising result: an economy without aggregate increasing returns to scale (or without any demand-induced technical progress) can generate a Kaldor-Verdoorn coefficient that lies between 0 and 1.

The Spanish paradox: demand growth with productivity stagnation

PurposeThis paper studies one of the most paradoxical facts of the Spanish economic growth during the period 1982–2007: high growth of investment and aggregate demand accompanied by the stagnation of labor productivity, especially from 1994.Design/methodology/approachThe authors propose two hypotheses: first, that the productive structure neutralized the mechanisms that link investment with productivity, essentially due to the low capital efficiency of the job-creating sectors (JCs); and consequently, investment drove production almost exclusively through employment, generating a trade-off between employment and productivity.FindingsThe econometric results find evidence in favor of both hypotheses applying a time-series methodology (ARIMA) to EU KLEMS data for a period of 25 years and 25 industries of the Spanish economy.Originality/valueThe first contribution of this paper is to offer an interpretation of the phenomenon from a perspective that combines elements of productive supply and aggregate demand, representing a novel contribution to the specialized literature. In addition, the authors show how the Kaldor-Verdoorn law could be neutralized due to employment creation (Okun's law) and the presence of a productivity-employment trade-off.

Demand, Distribution, Productivity, Structural Change, and (Secular?) Stagnation

The present paper emphasizes the role of demand, income distribution, endogenous productivity reactions, and other structural changes in the slowdown of the growth rate of output and productivity that has been observed in the United States over the last four decades. In particular, it is explained that weak net export demand, fiscal conservatism, and the increase in income inequality have put downward pressure on demand. Up until the crisis, this pressure was partially compensated for through debt-financed expenditure on behalf of the private sector, especially middle- and lower-income households. This debt overhang is now another obstacle in the way of demand recovery. In turn, as emphasized by the Kaldor-Verdoorn law and the induced technical change approach, the decrease in demand and the stagnation of wages can lead to an endogenous slowdown in productivity growth. Moreover, it is argued that the increasingly oligopolistic and financialized structure of the US economy also contributes to the slowdown. Finally, the paper argues that there is nothing secular about the current stagnation; addressing the aforementioned factors can allow for growth to resume, as has happened in the past.

The long-run properties of the Kaldor–Verdoorn law: a bounds test approach to a panel of Central and East European (CEE) countries

This study attempts to identify the short- and long-run components of the Kaldor–Verdoorn (KV) law. The law claims that demand dynamics drive productivity dynamics. The claim is tested with a panel of ten Central and Eastern-European countries, where productivity and demand growth have been slowing since 2004/2006 and where fears of an end of convergent growth are spreading. Meanwhile, the gradual slowing of output and productivity growth applies not only to the region considered, but it is also a global phenomenon that is occurring despite remarkable technical progress and that is referred to as the productivity puzzle. However, this puzzle would be solved in light of the KV law. To test for its long-term properties, panel cointegration models with autoregressive distributed lags are applied. Our results confirm the law for the region; slower productivity growth is not due to ‘adverse technological progress’ but to weakening external and domestic demand, which might block the implementation of product and process innovations.

Tertiarization, productivity and aggregate demand: evidence-based policies for European countries

Over the last two decades, mature European countries have experienced a slackening in economic growth and stagnating labor productivity. Such a stagnating productivity may result both from poor ‘within sector’ growth and/or ‘structural change’ toward the service sectors. Productivity growth in turn impacts economic and social sustainability in various ways: in particular, it matters for preserving trade balance sustainability at a high level of output and employment and it enhances the scope for preserving and improving welfare systems in the face of an ageing population. The contribution of this paper with regard to these issues is twofold. First, by means of a shift-share analysis, we assess the weight of ‘structural change’ versus ‘within sector’ growth in affecting overall productivity dynamics. Second, we investigate empirically the impact of demand factors on ‘within sector’ productivity growth by testing the Kaldor-Verdoorn law in selected European countries. To do so, we estimate long-run productivity elasticity to autonomous demand by using an ARDL (Autoregressive Distributed Lag) cointegration-based methodology for the 1970–2015 timespan. Findings show that: (i) productivity growth is mainly driven by the ‘within sector’ effect, with a relatively small role played by tertiarization, particularly in the most recent phase (1999–2015); and (ii) autonomous demand growth is relevant in determining productivity dynamics, especially in manufacturing and in the private sector of the economy. A major policy implication is that coordinated expansionary macroeconomic policies would matter for productivity growth in the EU, and at the same time contribute to sustaining employment.

Convergence in a neo-Kaleckian model with endogenous technical progress and autonomous demand growth*

This paper introduces technical progress along the lines of the Kaldor–Verdoorn law within a neo-Kaleckian model of growth and distribution that incorporates the Sraffian supermultiplier mechanism. The key features of the model include the interactive effects of endogenous technical progress, the non-capacity-creating demand component that grows at an exogenous rate and, in its long-run version, a Harrodian adjustment mechanism. It turns out that, whereas the model converges towards the normal rate of capacity utilization, the main tenets of the Keynesian model are still valid in the long run as well as in the short run in the sense that all of the average rates of accumulation, capacity utilization, and technical progress are lower during the traverse after the propensity to save or the share of profits goes up. The conditions under which the productivity regime can be wage-led are examined, and the possible effects of an exogenous technical shift are also discussed.

Econometric estimation of labor productivity in the brazilian manufacturing sector in the 2000s:

In the 2000-2008 period, which covers the analysis of this paper, while the average real GDP growth in Brazil was 3.7 percent per year, labor productivity in the manufacturing industry had a negative variation of 1.0 percent per year. In Brazil, there has been a “cliché” evaluation of the relatively low economic growth rates in the period as being the result of low labor productivity growth in the last few decades. However, according to the so-called Kaldor-Verdoorn law, the reverse could also be true: low growth rates of labor productivity in Brazil could be an effect of low growth rates of the real GDP. Based on Kaldorian assumptions, we regressed the change in labor productivity of 21 Brazilian manufacturing industries, covering the 2000-2008 period, on three main variables: the real GDP (which captures the Kaldor-Verdoorn law), gross investment to value added ratio, and technological innovation. Our results confirmed the validity of the Kaldor-Verdoorn law, as the real GDP growth was the most significant variable to explain the behavior of labor productivity in the manufacturing industries in Brazil in the 2000s, followed by the gross investment rate.

The Italian economic stagnation in a Kaldorian theoretical perspective

This paper analyses the Italian economic stagnation in a Kaldorian framework. On the theoretical ground we propose an interpretation of the Italian economic stagnation based on the continuous reduction of aggregate demand and labour productivity. We also consider the role of the banking sector as a factor driving aggregate demand and, in turn, labour productivity. We estimate a VAR for the period 2002–2015 to analyse jointly the evolution of private consumption, real GDP, private investments, credit supply, labour compensation and productivity. Our main empirical finding is that aggregate demand and credit supply significantly affect the path of labour productivity, consistently with Kaldor–Verdoorn Law.

Labour productivity growth slowdown: An effect of economic stagnation rather than its cause?

This paper reports the results of an econometric examination on the links between labour productivity and output growth for 22 countries (for which long-term data are available). It turns out that, generally, labour productivity does not “cause” output. In more cases, the causation seems to be running in the opposite direction: from output to productivity. This finding, though inconsistent with the “mainstream” ideas on the sources of long-term economic growth, is reminiscent of the classical Kaldor-Verdoorn Law. The progressing slowdown in output growth on the global level, initiated around the mid-1970s (when the process of discarding the earlier economic policy paradigms set in), may have been mirrored by the progressing slowdown in productivity growth (and that despite the hardly disputable acceleration of technological progress).

Convergence in a Neo-Kaleckian Model with Endogenous Technical Progress and Autonomous Demand Growth

This paper introduces technical progress along the lines of the Kaldor-Verdoorn law within a neo-Kaleckian model of growth and distribution that incorporates the Sraffian supermultiplier mechanism. The key features of the model include the interactive effects of endogenous technical progress, the non-capacity creating demand component that grows at an exogenous rate, and the Harrodian investment function. It turns out that, whereas the model converges towards the normal rate of capacity utilization, the main tenets of the Keynesian model are still valid in the long run as well as in the short run in the sense that all of the average rates of accumulation, capacity utilization and technical progress are lower during the traverse after the propensity to save or the share of profits goes up. The conditions under which the productivity regime can be wage-led are examined, and the possible effects of an exogenous technical shift are also discussed.

Manufacturing and economic development: The actuality of Kaldor's first and second laws

The objective of this paper is to evaluate the role of the manufacturing sector in the development process based on two laws of Kaldor. The first law states that the higher the growth of the manufacturing output, the more significant is the growth rate of the economy's product as a whole. The second law, known as the Kaldor–Verdoorn law, establishes a deterministic relation between the growth of manufacturing productivity and manufacturing output growth. This paper begins showing stylized facts of the production and exports of manufactured goods to show that these remain related to the income level of countries in recent years. Thereafter, a theoretical reflection on the importance of manufacturing in the process of economic development is performed, associating it to the manufacturing exports and to the exchange rate regime. Then, the paper performs a Kaldorian model systematization to assess the importance of manufacturing and its exports on the economic development. Econometric tests are performed based on a dynamic panel data for a sample of 63 middle and high-income countries, excluding major exporters of fuels for the period between 1990 and 2011, to analyze whether there is any difference in growth dynamics between these two groups. Estimates attest the occurrence of the two Kaldor laws, demonstrating that output growth in the manufacturing sector is essential to increasing economic growth and productivity, particularly in middle-income economies. The results also confirm that manufacturing exports are relevant to the development process and that the exchange rate contributes to this process in middle-income countries.

Insuficiencia dinámica, crecimiento y desempleo en México, 1974-2012

The paper draws from Prebisch's hyphotesis of dynamic insufficiency, Harrod's dynamic theory, Kaldor-Verdoorn law and Thirlwall's endogenous growth theory and looks at the determinants of Mexico's economic growth and unemployment rates during the period 1974-2012. Our empirical estimation shows that a low rate of capital accumulation generates insufficient absorption of labour force, low labour productivity and a slow long-run growth rate of output.

La productividad manufacturera en Argentina, Brasil y México: una estimación de la Ley de Kaldor-Verdoorn, 1950-2010

We studied the peculiarities of the long-term industrial development of the three largest Latin American countries: Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. To do this we turn to Nicholas Kaldor's cumulative causation, specifically involving the industrial sector.We contrasted the Kaldor-Verdoorn's Law, that links the growth rate of industrial output and the growth rate of its labour productivity. The goal is to distinguish to what extent the industrial pattern of the ISI was virtuous and the impact of the subsequent deep processes of liberalization in our countries. We tried to discriminate points of continuity and change of Latin America's industrial scheme by the study of its three main economies.

Entre a lei de Thirlwall e a hipótese Prebisch-Singer: uma avaliação da dinâmica dos termos de troca em um modelo de crescimento com restrição no Balanço de Pagamentos

Os modelos de crescimento com restrição no balanço de pagamentos (BOPC) podem ser utilizados para capturar importantes insights tanto da tradição keynesiana quanto estruturalista do pensamento econômico. Sugerimos que a Lei de Thirlwall corresponde a uma derivação matemática da regra de Prebisch. Dessa forma, este trabalho se propõe a estreitar a relação entre a Lei de Thirlwall e o pensamento cepalino por meio da inclusão, na primeira, de um componente que capte a hipótese Prebisch-Singer de deterioração dos termos de troca, empregando para tal uma definição de taxa de câmbio real alternativa. Chamamos a expressão final obtida de "regra Prebisch-Thirlwall". Propomonos, ainda, a endogeneizar a taxa de crescimento do produto e da produtividade a partir da combinação de nossa versão da lei de Thirlwall com a lei de Kaldor-Verdoorn.