Evolutionary Micro-founded Technical Change and The Kaldor-Verdoorn Law: Estimates from an Artificial World

This paper proposes to identify the micro-level sources for the dynamic increasing returns occurring at an aggregate level. The paper reverts to a micro model of technological change in-line with the evolutionary literature on industrial dynamics. The data generated through numerical simulations are used to identify the sources of increasing returns as measured by the Kaldor-Verdoorn Law. In this respect we also aim to provide some plausible micro-foundations to this Law. The paper shows that: (i) Dynamic increasing returns appear as an emergent property of the model; (ii) micro-characteristics of technical change, as the amplitude and the frequency of changes, as well as selection mechanisms significantly shape these increasing returns.