Factor Saving Innovations and Factor Income Shares

We present an endogenous growth model where innovations are factor saving. Technologies can be changed paying a cost and technological change takes place only if the benefits are larger than the costs. Since the gains derived from factor saving innovations depend on factor abundance, biased innovations respond to changes in factors' supply. Therefore, as the economy becomes more capital abundant agents try to use capital more intensively. Consequently, (a) the elasticiTY of output with respect to reproducible factors depends on the capital abundance of the economy and (b) the income share of reproducible factors increases as the output grows. Another insight of the model is that in some economies the production function converges to an AK in the long run, while in others long-run growth is zero.

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