The Ramsey Model in Discrete Time and Decreasing Population Growth Rate

This paper extends the Ramsey-Cass-Koopmans growth model of optimal capital accumulation in discrete time by introducing a generic population growth law that satisfies the following properties: population is strictly increasing and bounded, and the population growth rate is decreasing to zero as time tends to infinity. We show that the optimization problem admits a unique solution that can be characterized by the Euler equation. A closed-form solution of the model is presented for the case of a Cobb-Douglas production function and a logarithmic utility function. In contrast to the original model, the solution is not always monotone