A common perception about the neoclassical growth model is that an economy devoid of capital cannot evolve to strictly positive levels of output if capital is essential. We challenge this view by positing a broad class of production functions, encompassing the neoclassical production function,...

The Inada (1963) conditions constitute a defining property of the neoclassical production function with capital and labor as arguments. Are these conditions justifiable on economic grounds? Yes, they are: we show that a production function with positive, yet diminishing marginal products and...

The determinants of the direction of technical change and their implications for economic growth and economic policy are studied in the one-sector neoclassical growth model of Ramsey, Cass, and Koopmans extended to allow for endogenous capital- and labor-augmenting technical change. We develop a...

This paper embeds firm dynamics into the Neoclassical model and provides a simple framework to solve for the transitional dynamics of economies moving towards more selection. As in the Neoclassical model, markets are perfectly competitive, there is only one good and two production factors...

This paper studies China's four-fold increase in per capita GDP relative to the U.S. between 1995 and 2019. First, we argue that China's growth pattern is very similar to that of several other East Asia economies that initially grew very quickly. Second, we show that a minimalist...

In a neoclassical economy with endogenous capital- and labor-augmenting technical change the steady-state growth rate of output per worker is shown to increase in the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor. This confirms the assessment of Klump and de La Grandville (2000) that the...

It has long been argued that the anticipations of some future event will impact current consumption and well-being in advance of the occurrence of the event itself. This paper introduces this idea of anticipated pleasure into the Ramsey growth model, by assuming that in addition to his own...

Uzawaś steady-state growth theorem (Uzawa (1961)) is generalized to a neoclassical economy that uses current output, e. g., to create technical progress or to manufacture intermediates. The difference between aggregate final-good production and these resources is referred to as net output. The...

Prettner (2019) studies the implications of automation for economic growth and the labor share in a variant of the Solow-Swan model. The aggregate production function allows for two types of capital, traditional and automation capital. Traditional capital and labor are imperfect substitutes...