IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_1671.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Something out of Nothing? Neoclassical Growth and the ‘Trivial’ Steady State

Author

Listed:
  • Hendrik Hakenes
  • Andreas Irmen

Abstract

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, that—surprisingly—show that a take-off is possible even though the initial capital stock is zero and capital is essential. Since the marginal product of capital is initially infinite, the “trivial” steady state becomes so unstable that the solution to the equation of motion involves the possibility of a take-off. When it happens, the take-off is spontaneous: there is no causality, not even randomness.

Suggested Citation

  • Hendrik Hakenes & Andreas Irmen, 2006. "Something out of Nothing? Neoclassical Growth and the ‘Trivial’ Steady State," CESifo Working Paper Series 1671, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_1671
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp1671.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    capital accumulation; neoclassical growth model;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ces:ceswps:_1671. 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: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    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.