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Contribution Details

Type Working Paper
Scope Discipline-based scholarship
Title Non-homothetic preferences and industry directed technical change
Organization Unit
Authors
  • Timo Boppart
  • Franziska J Weiss
Language
  • English
Institution University of Zurich
Series Name Working paper series / Department of Economics
Number 123
ISSN 1664-7041
Number of Pages 43
Date 2013
Abstract Text Sectoral data features (i) changing relative expenditures of different sectors, (ii) non-constancy in relative prices and (iii) long-run trends in relative TFP growth rates across sectors. We provide a tractable theory of industry directed technical change, which is able to reconcile these findings. In doing so, this paper emphasizes the importance of directed technical change, nonhomotheticity of preferences and structural change as a long-run phenomenon. Using the input-output tables of the U.S., our theory helps us to reconstruct how structural change in terms of final consumption affects the market size of industry value-added. Arguing that the structural change across broad categories of final consumption is exogenous from the perspective of an individual firm, this gives us an instrument for the industrial market size (at the valueadded level). We then empirically test for the market size effect of induced innovation. Our findings suggest that a 1 percent increase in an industry’s market size (relative to GDP) leads to an increase in the TFP growth rate of about 0.3 percentage points over five years.
Official URL http://www.econ.uzh.ch/static/wp/econwp123.pdf
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Keywords Directed technical change, structural change, non-homothetic preferences, input-output tables, market size effect, Wirtschaftswachstum, Strukturwandel, sektoraler Strukturwandel, Homothetie, totale Faktorproduktivität