This paper provides an introduction to the field of evolutionary economics with emphasis on the evolutionary theory of household behavior. It shows that the goal of evolutionary economics is to improve upon neoclassical economics by incorporating more realistic and empirically grounded...

We build a directed technical change model of the British Industrial Revolution where one intermediate goods sector uses a fixed renewable energy (“wood”) quantity, and another uses coal at a fixed price. With a high enough elasticity of substitution between the two goods in producing final...

World and U.S. energy intensities have declined over the past century, falling at an average rate of approximately 1.2–1.5 percent a year. The decline has persisted through periods of stagnating or even falling energy prices, suggesting the decline is driven in large part by autonomous...

We prove a generalized, multi-factor version of the Uzawa steady-state growth theorem. The theorem implies that neoclassical growth models need at least three factors of production to be consistent with empirical evidence on both the capital-labor elasticity of substitution and the existence of...

We prove a generalized, multi-factor version of the Uzawa steady-state growth theorem. In the two-factor case, the theorem implies that a neoclassical growth model cannot be simultaneously consistent with empirical evidence on both capital-augmenting technical change and the elasticity of...

Railroad access can accelerate the technological progress in the industrial sector and therefore induce structural change and urbanization, the two common features of modern economic growth. I examine this particular mechanism in the context of Japanese railroad network expansion and modern...

In transitional economies like China, comparatively low real wages imply sub-OECD labor and skill shares of value added and comparatively high capital shares. Despite rapid real wage growth, however, rather than converge toward the OECD, China's low-skill labor share has been falling, due to...

This paper uses a benchmark climate model with endogenous technical change to consider the effects of three extensions on optimal policy under a clean transition. First, the movement of workers between non-energy and energy sectors lowers the cost of abatement by more than an order of magnitude,...

The framework used to endogenise technology growth by Acemoglu, Aghion, Bursztyn, and Hemous (2012), hereafter AABH, allows the existence of unstable equilibria and does not provide a rationale for specifying which equilibrium should apply when more than one exists. This paper: (i) suggests a...

We prove a generalized, multi-factor version of the Uzawa steady-state growth theorem, Balanced growth with capital-augmenting technical change is possible when capital has a unitary elasticity of substitution with at least one other factor of production, Thus, a neoclassical growth model with...