The Direction of Technical Change in Capital-Resource Economies

We analyze a multi-sector growth model with directed technical change where man-made capital and exhaustible resources are essen- tial for production. The relative profitability of factor-specific inno- vations endogenously determines whether technical progress will be capital- or resource-augmenting. We show that convergence to bal- anced growth implies zero capital-augmenting innovations: in the long run, the economy exhibits purely resource-augmenting technical change. This result provides sound microfoundations for the broad class of models of exogenous/endogenous growth where resource-aug- menting progress is required to sustain consumption in the long run, contradicting the view that these models are conceptually biased in favor of sustainability.