Kaldor 3.0: An Empirical Investigation of the Verdoorn-augmented Technical Progress Function

Consistent with neoclassical theory, the recent slowdown in labour productivity is generally regarded as one of the main causes of the current phase of economic stagnation. By contrast, post-Keynesian economics looks at productivity growth as positively affected by the rate of growth of output in the long run as well. By focusing on this alternative perspective, in our exploration we deal with an extended version of the Kaldorian technical progress function in which the trend growth rate of productivity is endogenously shaped by the dynamics of both output and capital−labour ratio. We empirically verify such a relationship for the total economy and the manufacturing sector through a structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model for G7 countries (1970–2017). Our findings support the validity of a technical progress function, which admits increasing returns to scale, thus indicating that both the rate of growth of output and the process of capital intensification exert positive effects on productivity growth, even beyond the business cycle.