Structural Change and Economic Growth

Aoki M.and H.Yoshikawa，“Demand Saturation / Creation and Economic Growth”（《经济行为与组织杂志》）提出了一个新的经济增长模型。在标准文献中，抑制经济增长的根本因素是生产或研发技术的资本报酬递减。本文提出了一个模型，其中抑制增长的因素是个人消费品需求的饱和。经济通过引进新产品/产业来恢复增长。新产品/新行业创造了需求的高增长。通过这样做，它促进了资本积累，并最终维持经济增长。该模型证明了与衡量技术进步的标准全要素生产率不同的创造需求的创新的重要性。青木/吉川模型表明，经济增长与产业结构的变化密切相关。我们为日本、美国和德国探索了这种关系。在日本，我们发现增长率与产业结构变化的规模成正相关。相反，对于战后的U.S.no，我们发现了这种正相关关系。然而，我们发现了战前美国的数据。我们的研究结果表明，对于“年轻”的经济体，高增长往往伴随着产业结构的变化，而对于“成熟”的经济体，没有这样的关系。我们计划研究我们的结果对“收敛”争议的影响。

Aoki M.and H.Yoshikawa, "Demand Saturation / Creation and Economic Growth" forthcoming in Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization presents a new model of economic growth.In the standard literature, the fundamental factor to restrain economic growth is diminishing returns to capital in production or R＆D technology. This paper presents a model in which the factor to restrain growth is saturation of demand for individual consumption good. The economy revives growth by the introduction of new products/industries. The new products/industries creates high growth of demand. By so doing, it elicits capital accumulation, and ultimately sustains economic growth. The model demonstrates the importance of demand creating innovations which are different from the standard measure of technical progress, namely total factor productivity.The Aoki/Yoshikawa model shows that economic growth is closely linked to changes in industrial structure. We explored this relationship for Japan, the U.S.and Germany. For Japan, we found a positive relationship between growth rate and a size of changes in industrial structure. In contrast, for the postwar U.S.no such positive relationship was found. However, we found a positive relationship for the prewar U.S.data. Our results suggest that for the 'young' economies, high growth tends to be accompanied by changes in industrial structure, while for the 'mature' economies, there is no such relationship. We plan to study the implications of our results for the 'convergence' controversy.