Thursday 27 November 2008

Technology's relation to capital accumulation

There is a debate in economics about how much economic growth is caused by accumulation of capital (physical or educational), and how much by accumulation of technological knowledge, and whether one requires the other to have an effect.

Much of the debate takes place in theoretical domains, because the data, when analysed with conventional estimation techniques, can often be interpreted in more than one way. To give an example, national output might be increasing because of improvements in knowledge with capital investment occurring in the same proportions because investment has higher profits as a result of the knowledge. Or it might be increasing because of capital accumulation, and skills build up as a result of increased capital. So we have data where knowledge, capital, and output are all rising, and can't be separated by usual studies of common international datasets.

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