The Market Size Effect in Endogenous Growth Reconsidered

URL des Documents de travail : https://centredeconomiesorbonne.univ-paris1.fr/documents-de-travail-du-ces/Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 2018.32 - ISSN : 1955-611XThis paper aims at disentangling two effects of the labor supply size on long-run growth that are traditionally undistinguishable under preference homotheticity: a scale effect, and a market size effect. To reach this goal, we present two horizontal-innovation models of endogenous growth with non-homothetic preferences. We demonstrate in particular that in such set-ups, keeping the economy's total effective labor supply constant, a "richer" country (i.e., with higher labor productivity and a smaller labor force) grows faster than a "poorer" country (i.e., with lower labor productivity and a larger labor force), leading the two countries to diverge