Knowledge Codification and Endogenous Growth

The usual models of endogenous growth treat knowledge codification as a byproduct of R&D and as costless. In contrast to this, one can observe great efforts of private firms for the purposeful codification of knowledge. We incorporate costly knowledge codification in an overlapping generations framework of endogenous growth and show that the steady-state growth rate of capital being higher than that of the knowledge stock is a sufficient condition for knowledge codification. With decreasing codification costs, every overlapping generations economy will be codifying in the long run if the rate at which the costs decline is higher than or equal to the steady-state growth rate of knowledge.