Knowledge intensive business services and long term growth

International audienceThe goal of this paper is to (re)assess the relationship between knowledge intensive busi- ness services (KIBS) and the economic growth. Taking into account various conflicting relationships between KIBS and growth, we build a multi agent-based system involving industrial firms, consumer-services firms, consumers, KIBS firms and a banking system. Our main result is that KIBS can be regarded as an engine for the economic growth and that they operate as a substitute for the material capital accumulation. Nevertheless, material capital accumulation still appears as a significant factor of economic growth