Endogenous Growth and Structural Change Through Vertical and Horizontal Innovations

Abstract

This paper combines horizontal and vertical innovations to build an endogenous growth model that allows for structural change. Older technologies are continuously replaced by newer ones due to creative destruction and new technologies appear as a result of horizontal innovations and as a result of consumers’ preferences for variety. We assume fixed operational costs for the manufacturing sector and an endogenously determined price of the patent for each new technology. The duration of a patent is not limited but every industry is profitable only for a certain period of time, thus making the effective time of existence of the technology endogenous and finite. We demonstrate that such an economy exhibits constant growth rates that are proportional to the average productivity growth, despite the ongoing disappearance of older technologies from the industry.

Keywords: endogenous growth, creative destruction, endogenous structural change, horizontal innovation, endogenous patents

JEL Classification: O31, O34, O41