IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/qjecon/v120y2005i2p517-549..html

The Shape of Production Functions and the Direction of Technical Change

Author

Listed:
  • Charles I. Jones

Abstract

This pai>er views the standard production function in macroeconomics as a reduced form and derives its properties from microfoundations. The shape of this production function is governed by the distribution of ideas. If that distribution is Pareto, then two results obtain: the global production function is Cobb-Douglas, and technical change in the long run is labor-augmenting. Kortum showed that Pareto distributions are necessary if search-based idea models are to exhibit steady-state growth. Here we show that this same assumption delivers the additional results about the shape of the production function and the direction of technical change.

Suggested Citation

  • Charles I. Jones, 2005. "The Shape of Production Functions and the Direction of Technical Change," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(2), pages 517-549.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:120:y:2005:i:2:p:517-549.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/qje/120.2.517
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • O40 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - General
    • E10 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:120:y:2005:i:2:p:517-549.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/qje .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.