Energy in Growth Accounting and the Aggregation of Capital and Output

Reiner Kümmel () and Dietmar Lindenberger
Additional contact information
Reiner Kümmel: University of Würzburg
Dietmar Lindenberger: University of Cologne

Biophysical Economics and Resource Quality, 2020, vol. 5, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract We review the physical aggregation of value added and capital in terms of work performance and information processing and its relation to the deflated monetary time series of output and capital. In growth accounting it complements the time series of labor and energy, measured in hours worked per year and kilowatt-hours consumed per year, respectively. This aggregation is the conceptual basis on which those energy-dependent production functions have been constructed that reproduce economic growth of major industrial countries in the 20th century with small residuals and output elasticities that are for energy much larger and for labor much smaller than the cost shares of these factors. Accounting for growth in such a way, which deviates from that of mainstream economics, may serve as a first step towards integrating the First and the Second Law of Thermodynamics into economics.

Keywords: Aggregation; Cost-share theorem; Economic growth; Energy; Entropy; Output elasticities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s41247-020-00068-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:bioerq:v:5:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1007_s41247-020-00068-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/41247

DOI: 10.1007/s41247-020-00068-1

Access Statistics for this article

Biophysical Economics and Resource Quality is currently edited by C.A.S. Hall and U. Bardi

More articles in Biophysical Economics and Resource Quality from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().