Kaldor's growth laws

Last updated

Kaldor's growth laws are a series of three laws relating to the causation of economic growth.

Looking at the countries of the world now and through time Nicholas Kaldor noted a high correlation between living standards and the share of resources devoted to industrial activity, at least up to some level of income. Only New Zealand, Australia and Canada have become rich whilst relying mainly on agriculture. [1] [2] He proposed three laws on these empirical regularities:

  1. The growth of the GDP is positively related to the growth of the manufacturing sector. This is perhaps better stated in terms of GDP growth being faster the greater the excess of growth of industrial growth relative to GDP growth: that is when the share of industry in GDP is rising. [3]
  2. The productivity of the manufacturing sector is positively related the growth of the manufacturing sector (this is also known as Verdoorn's law). [4] Here the argument is that there are increasing returns to scale in manufacturing. These may be static—where the larger the size of the sector the lower the average costs—or dynamic via the induced effect that output growth has on capital accumulation and technical progress. Learning by doing effects are also likely to be important.
  3. The productivity of the non-manufacturing sector is positively related to the growth of the manufacturing sector. This last law is the least intuitive and is based on the argument that the non-industrial sector has diminishing returns to scale. As resources are moved out the average productivity of those that remain will rise.

Thirlwall (2003, p123–124) also reports Kaldor's highlighting of three subsidiary propositions which are also important to take into account. They are:

  1. That as the scope for the increasing returns sector to absorb the labour from the diminishing returns sector reduces so too will the rate of growth of GDP.
  2. That in the early stages of industrialisation the demand comes from the agricultural sector—but in the later stages export demand is likely to drive the process. Here the limited size of the internal market is likely to be such as to limit the realisation of economies of scale and there is the need for generating foreign exchange to import necessary inputs.
  3. A virtuous circle can be generated by export growth and output growth but that this is difficult to establish as it is likely to depend on exceptional enterprise, protection or subsidy.

Notes

  1. Kaldor, N. (1967). Strategic Factors in Economic Development. New York: Ithaca.
  2. Thirlwall, A. (2003). Growth and Development: With Special Reference to Developing Economies (7th ed.). Palgrave. pp. 121–122. ISBN   978-0-333-98089-7.
  3. Thirlwall, A. P. (1983). "A Plain Man's Guide to Kaldor's Growth Laws". Journal of Post Keynesian Economics. 5 (3): 345–358. doi:10.1080/01603477.1983.11489375. JSTOR   4537750.
  4. Verdoorn, P. J. (1949). "Fattori che regolano lo sviluppo della produttivita del lavoro". L'Industria (in Italian). 1: 310.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Economies of scale</span> Cost advantages obtained via scale of operation

In microeconomics, economies of scale are the cost advantages that enterprises obtain due to their scale of operation, and are typically measured by the amount of output produced per unit of time. A decrease in cost per unit of output enables an increase in scale. At the basis of economies of scale, there may be technical, statistical, organizational or related factors to the degree of market control. This is just a partial description of the concept.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Economy of Honduras</span>

The economy of Honduras is based mostly on agriculture, which accounts for 14% of its gross domestic product (GDP) in 2013. The country's leading export is coffee (US$340 million), which accounted for 22% of the total Honduran export revenues. Bananas, formerly the country's second-largest export until being virtually wiped out by 1998's Hurricane Mitch, recovered in 2000 to 57% of pre-Mitch levels. Cultivated shrimp is another important export sector. Since the late 1970s, towns in the north began industrial production through maquiladoras, especially in San Pedro Sula and Puerto Cortés.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Economy of Libya</span>

The economy of Libya depends primarily on revenues from the petroleum sector, which represents over 95% of export earnings and 60% of GDP. These oil revenues and a small population have given Libya one of the highest nominal per capita GDP in Africa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Economy of Pakistan</span>

The economy of Pakistan is classified as a developing economy. It is the 24th-largest in terms of GDP based on purchasing power parity (PPP) and 46th largest in terms of nominal GDP. As of 2023, the country has a population of 232 million people. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), on a per capita income basis, Pakistan ranked 161st by GDP (nominal) and 138th by GDP (PPP).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Economy of Paraguay</span>

The economy of Paraguay is a market economy that is highly dependent on agriculture products. In recent years, Paraguay's economy has grown as a result of increased agricultural exports, especially soybeans. Paraguay has the economic advantages of a young population and vast hydroelectric power. Its disadvantages include the few available mineral resources, and political instability. The government welcomes foreign investment.

The economy of Eswatini is fairly diversified. Agriculture, forestry and mining account for about 13 percent of Eswatini's GDP whereas manufacturing represent 37 percent of GDP. Services – with government services in the lead – constitute the other 50 percent of GDP.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Economy of Syria</span>

Syria's economic situation has been turbulent and their economy has deteriorated considerably since the beginning of the Syrian civil war, which erupted in March 2011.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Economic growth</span> Measure of increase in market value of goods

Economic growth can be defined as the increase or improvement in the inflation-adjusted market value of the goods and services produced by an economy in a financial year. Statisticians conventionally measure such growth as the percent rate of increase in the real and nominal gross domestic product (GDP).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Import substitution industrialization</span> Trade and economic policy

Import substitution industrialization (ISI) is a trade and economic policy that advocates replacing foreign imports with domestic production. It is based on the premise that a country should attempt to reduce its foreign dependency through the local production of industrialized products. The term primarily refers to 20th-century development economics policies, but it has been advocated since the 18th century by economists such as Friedrich List and Alexander Hamilton.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nicholas Kaldor</span> Hungarian-British economist

Nicholas Kaldor, Baron Kaldor, born Káldor Miklós, was a Cambridge economist in the post-war period. He developed the "compensation" criteria called Kaldor–Hicks efficiency for welfare comparisons (1939), derived the cobweb model, and argued for certain regularities observable in economic growth, which are called Kaldor's growth laws. Kaldor worked alongside Gunnar Myrdal to develop the key concept Circular Cumulative Causation, a multicausal approach where the core variables and their linkages are delineated. Both Myrdal and Kaldor examine circular relationships, where the interdependencies between factors are relatively strong, and where variables interlink in the determination of major processes. Gunnar Myrdal got the concept from Knut Wicksell and developed it alongside Nicholas Kaldor when they worked together at the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. Myrdal concentrated on the social provisioning aspect of development, while Kaldor concentrated on demand-supply relationships to the manufacturing sector. Kaldor also coined the term "convenience yield" related to commodity markets and the so-called theory of storage, which was initially developed by Holbrook Working.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Diminishing returns</span> Economic theory

In economics, diminishing returns are the decrease in marginal (incremental) output of a production process as the amount of a single factor of production is incrementally increased, holding all other factors of production equal. The law of diminishing returns states that in productive processes, increasing a factor of production by one unit, while holding all other production factors constant, will at some point return a lower unit of output per incremental unit of input. The law of diminishing returns does not cause a decrease in overall production capabilities, rather it defines a point on a production curve whereby producing an additional unit of output will result in a loss and is known as negative returns. Under diminishing returns, output remains positive, but productivity and efficiency decrease.

Verdoorn's law is named after Dutch economist Petrus Johannes Verdoorn (1949). It states that in the long run productivity generally grows proportionally to the square root of output. In economics, this law pertains to the relationship between the growth of output and the growth of productivity. According to the law, faster growth in output increases productivity due to increasing returns. Verdoorn argued that "in the long run a change in the volume of production, say about 10 per cent, tends to be associated with an average increase in labor productivity of 4.5 per cent." The Verdoorn coefficient close to 0.5 (0.484) is also found in subsequent estimations of the law.

The Dual Sector model, or the Lewis model, is a model in Developmental economics that explains the growth of a developing economy in terms of a labour transition between two sectors, a traditional agricultural sector and a modern industrial sector.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Industry of China</span> Manufacturing and economic sector of China

Industry is 39.4% of China's gross domestic product (GDP) in 2022. In 2007, industry contributed 46.7 percent of GDP in 2010 and occupied 27 percent of the workforce. In 2015, the manufacturing industrial sectors contributed to 40% of China's GDP. The manufacturing sector produced 44.1 percent of GDP in 2004 and accounted for 11.3 percent of total employment in 2006.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Agriculture in Moldova</span>

Moldova is an agrarian-industrial state, with agricultural land occupying 2,499,000 hectares in a total area of 3,384,600 hectares. It is estimated that 1,810,500 of these hectares are arable. Moldova is located in Eastern Europe, and is landlocked, bordering Romania and Ukraine. Moldova's agricultural sector benefits from a geographical proximity to large markets, namely the European Union. As a share of GDP, agriculture has declined from 56% in 1995 to 13.8% in 2013. Data from 2015 estimated that agriculture accounted for 12% of Moldova's GDP. Agriculture as a sector is export-oriented, with the composition of Moldova's total exports containing agriculture and the agri-food sector as a main component. 70% of agri-food exports in 2012 included beverages, edible fruits and nuts, oilseeds, vegetable preparations and cereals. Here, fruits, vegetables and nuts were attributed to 33% of Moldova's exports for 2011–2013. Moldova is also one of the top ten apple exporters in the world. However, because of the long-term emphasis on fruit, vegetables are often imported.

The United Kingdom, where the Industrial Revolution began in the late 18th century, has a long history of manufacturing, which contributed to Britain's early economic growth. During the second half of the 20th century, there was a steady decline in the importance of manufacturing and the economy of the United Kingdom shifted toward services. Manufacturing, however, remains important for overseas trade and accounted for 44% of goods exports in 2014. In June 2010, manufacturing in the United Kingdom accounted for 8.2% of the workforce and 12% of the country's national output. The East Midlands and West Midlands were the regions with the highest proportion of employees in manufacturing. London had the lowest at 2.8%.

The balanced growth theory is an economic theory pioneered by the economist Ragnar Nurkse (1907–1959). The theory hypothesises that the government of any underdeveloped country needs to make large investments in a number of industries simultaneously. This will enlarge the market size, increase productivity, and provide an incentive for the private sector to invest.

The Fei–Ranis model of economic growth is a dualism model in developmental economics or welfare economics that has been developed by John C. H. Fei and Gustav Ranis and can be understood as an extension of the Lewis model. It is also known as the Surplus Labor model. It recognizes the presence of a dual economy comprising both the modern and the primitive sector and takes the economic situation of unemployment and underemployment of resources into account, unlike many other growth models that consider underdeveloped countries to be homogenous in nature. According to this theory, the primitive sector consists of the existing agricultural sector in the economy, and the modern sector is the rapidly emerging but small industrial sector. Both the sectors co-exist in the economy, wherein lies the crux of the development problem. Development can be brought about only by a complete shift in the focal point of progress from the agricultural to the industrial economy, such that there is augmentation of industrial output. This is done by transfer of labor from the agricultural sector to the industrial one, showing that underdeveloped countries do not suffer from constraints of labor supply. At the same time, growth in the agricultural sector must not be negligible and its output should be sufficient to support the whole economy with food and raw materials. Like in the Harrod–Domar model, saving and investment become the driving forces when it comes to economic development of underdeveloped countries.

Colombia is now a country mostly in South America, and has been home to many indigenous peoples and cultures since at least 12,000 BCE.

The economic de-industrialisation of India refers a period of reduction in industrial based activities within the Indian economy from 1757 to 1947. The process of de-industrialisation is an economic change in which employment in the manufacturing sector declines due to various economic or political reasons. The decline in employment in manufacturing is also followed by the fall in the share of manufacturing value added in GDP. The process of de-industrialisation can be due to development and growth in the economy and it can also occur due to political factors.