April 2002

IZA DP No. 472: Structural Change and the Kaldor Facts of Economic Growth

We present a model in which two of the most important features of the long-run growth process are reconciled: the massive changes in the structure of production and employment; and the Kaldor facts of economic growth. We assume that households expand their consumption along a hierarchy of needs and firms introduce continuously new products. In equilibrium industries with an expanding and those with a declining employment share co-exist, and each such industry goes (or has already gone) through a cycle of take-off, maturity, and stagnation. Nonetheless macroeconomic aggregates grow pari passu at a constant rate.