Quality capital and economic growth

The productivity generated by capital goods is not uniform, specially over the time. The productivity obtained from phisical goods is minor than one generated by new capital goods, or quality capital goods. It seems that the difference between both kinds of capital stems from the fact that vintage capital is affected by an additional form of technical progress. When capital is affected by this kind of technical progress, it is so-called capital jelly from Solow (1960). There are hence two possible forms of understand technical progress: the classical one or, alternatively, this new class of technical progress tath affects only to capital. Both kinds of technical progress affect growth in two separate ways, and for this reason it is interesting to develop a special analysis on the investment in capital goods in order to identify what is the difference between the productivity derived from physical capital and from vintage capital. The main aim of this paper is to analyse how two types of technical progress affcet the real income growth rate in the countries belonging to three world areas: North America, the Euro zone, and some countries of the Pacific Rim, during the period 1960-2000. Precursory works of the present research have found in Hulten (1992), Greenwood, Hercowitz and Krusell (1997), Gordon (1999) and Hobijn (2000).