A Neo-Kaldorian Approach to Structural Economic Dynamics

Although the Structural Economic Dynamic approach provides a simultaneous consideration of demand and supply sides of economic growth, it does not take into fully account the possible role played by demand in the generation of technical progress. From a neo-Kaldorian perspective, this paper seeks to establish the concepts of demand and productivity regimes in an open version of the pure labour Pasinettian model. In order to derive the demand regime, a disaggregated version of the Keynesian multiplier is derived for an open economy, while the productivity regime is built in terms of disaggregated Kaldor-Verdoorn’s laws. The upshot is a multi-sector growth model of structural change and cumulative causation, in which an open version of the Pasinettian model may be obtained as a particular case. Besides, it is highlighted that the evolution of demand patterns, while being affected by differential rates of productivity growth in different sectors of the economy, also play an important role to establish the pace of technical progress.