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N. Gregory Mankiw · David Romer · David N. Weil

This 1992 Quarterly Journal of Economics paper by Mankiw, Romer, and Weil tests whether Robert Solow's (1956) neoclassical growth model, augmented to include accumulation of human as well as physical …

Robert M. Solow

Robert Solow's 1956 paper argues that the Harrod-Domar model's famous conclusion -- that steady economic growth is only ever balanced on a "knife-edge," liable to tip into growing unemployment or …

F. P. Ramsey

Frank Ramsey's 1928 paper asks how much of its income a nation ought to save, and derives a rule -- that the rate of saving times the marginal utility of consumption should equal the gap between …

Trevor W. Swan

Trevor Swan's 1956 paper illustrates, with two diagrams, the connexion between capital accumulation and the growth of the productive labour force in a one-sector economy, then devotes a long appendix …

Paul M. Romer

This 1990 Journal of Political Economy paper by Paul Romer models long-run growth as driven by technological change that arises from intentional research investment by profit-maximizing firms, …

Karam Jo · Seula Kim

Jo and Kim ask two related questions: (1) How do firms use different types of innovation when learning others' technology takes time? (2) How does this process alter the aggregate implications of firm …

Paul M. Romer

This 1986 Journal of Political Economy paper by Paul Romer builds a fully specified competitive-equilibrium model of long-run growth in which knowledge is an input to production with increasing …

Jeremy Greenwood · Zvi Hercowitz · Per Krusell

This paper asks how much of postwar U.S. economic growth came from investment-specific technological change -- cheaper, more efficient new equipment -- as opposed to ordinary (Hicks-neutral) …

Peter A. Diamond

This 1965 American Economic Review paper by Peter Diamond extends Samuelson's pure consumption-loan model by adding a produced, durable capital good, so that people can provide for retirement either …

David Cass

David Cass's 1965 paper elaborates Frank Ramsey's 1928 optimum-saving problem inside Robert Solow's aggregative growth model, showing that maximizing the discounted stream of utility from per-capita …

Fabio Bertolotti

This paper examines how anticipated changes in patent term affect R&D and innovation, using the U.S. ratification of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) agreement in 1995 …

Paul Gaggl · Aspen Gorry · Christian vom Lehn

Gaggl, Gorry, and vom Lehn document that services sectors produce a rising share of output in both of the US production networks they study — the input-output network for intermediate inputs and the …

Nicolas Coeurdacier · Florian Oswald · Marc Teignier

This paper asks how cities grow in the process of structural transformation — specifically, whether urban expansion occurs at the intensive margin (higher density within a fixed area) or the extensive …

Robert M. Solow

Robert Solow's 1957 paper proposes a simple method for separating shifts in the aggregate production function ("technical change," broadly defined) from movements along it caused by capital …

Francesco Caselli · James Feyrer

Backing the marginal product of capital straight out of output, the capital stock and the capital share gives a return in poor countries more than twice that in rich ones -- until two corrections are …

Charles I. Plosser

This 1989 Journal of Economic Perspectives essay by Charles Plosser is a sympathetic introduction to real business cycle (RBC) theory, written as a counterpart to Mankiw's companion critique in the …

Robert E. Lucas, Jr.

If two countries produce the same good with the same constant-returns technology, diminishing returns imply the poorer one has the higher marginal product of capital -- and on 1988 data, US output per …