ECONOMIC GROWTH, AN EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS THAT GIVES RISE TO AN ATTRACTOR

Economic growth is seen here as the outcome of an entrepreneur-driven process of evolution in the context of an economy of competitive markets. In the course of this process the entrepreneurs implement capital and labour factors, one part of them committed to substitution and the other to complementarity with increasing returns. The theory demonstrates that the conditions of equilibrium of the different markets give rise to an attractor made up of steady states. The growth determinants for these states are employment, investment and technical productivity, with the profit share in income always being equal to 1/3. The comparison of what is learned with the empirical reality of the main developed economies demonstrates the interest of this view of growth. The attractors of the United States economy for the period 1960–2000 are given special attention. JEL classification: O30, O40, O57