Growth, Concentration and Inequality in a Unified Schumpeter Mark I + II model

Patrick Mellacher

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: I develop a simple Schumpeterian agent-based model where industries are born and evolve endogenously and use it to study the interrelation between technological change, economic growth, market concentration and inequality. This theoretical model combines features of the Schumpeter Mark I (centering around the entrepreneur) and Mark II model (emphasizing the innovative capacities of firms), and is capable of reproducing a large set of stylized facts concerning growth, market concentration, inequality and productivity. In particular, the model can reproduce the industry life-cycle, a Kuznets curve, a Piketty-style increase of inequality in "mature" economies, as well as recent stylized facts on "declining business dynamism". I conduct an extensive policy analysis to identify the parameters that produce these stylized facts in the model. Notably, the empirically-grounded assumption that the difficulty to imitate a firm depends on its technological distance to the imitator can explain prominent stylized facts of economic development since the 1980s. However, growth in the number of industries triggered by the exploitation of new technological opportunities can prove to be a counteracting force to these tendencies in the short run. Thus, the model suggests a wave-like evolution of growth, inequality and market concentration centered around advances in basic research. Extensive sensitivity analysis suggest that policies aimed at increasing the innovative capacities of firms increase the rate of growth of output and real wages (dynamic efficiency) at the expense of increasing market concentration (static inefficiency) and inequality.

Date: 2021-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-ent, nep-hme, nep-ino and nep-tid
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