Relying upon an original (country-sector-year) measure of robotic capital ($RK$), we investigate the degree of complementarity/substitutability between robots and workers at different skill levels. We employ nonparametric methods to estimate elasticity of substitution patterns between $RK$ and skilled/unskilled labor over the period 1995–2009. We show that: i) on average, $RK$ exhibits less substitutability with skilled workers compared to unskilled workers, indicating a phenomenon of “RK-Skill complementarity”. This pattern holds in a global context characterized by significant heterogeneity; ii) the dynamic of “RK-Skill complementarity” has increased since the early 2000s; iii) the observed strengthening is more prominent in OECD countries, as opposed to non-OECD countries, and in the Manufacturing sector, compared to non-Manufacturing industries.

This paper sets up a small open economy model with habit persistence in consumption in which distortionary taxation is available in a flexible price environment. In open economy, the habit persistence in consumption aggravates the terms of trade externality, absent in closed economy, calling for more aggressive fiscal policy. While optimal labor income taxes are time-invariant in a closed economy with internal habit, they should be time-varying in an open economy to alleviate the terms of trade externality, even if the intertemporal elasticity of substitution equals the intratemporal elasticity of substitution. In a small open economy composed of households with habit persistence in consumption, households’ decision to gradually adjust their consumption and labor hours intensifies the undesirable terms of trade externality or the terms of trade channel. This generates a time-varying wedge between the efficiency conditions of the Ramsey planner and the market equilibrium conditions, calling for a time-varying taxation which takes into account the intertemporal elasticity of substitution and the intratemporal elasticity of substitution between home and foreign goods, in addition to the degree of habit and goods market distortion. The volatility of optimal tax rate increases with the degree of habit, whether households have external or internal habit. The volatility of tax rate shows an inverted U-shape in the degree of openness in the small open economy with habit. Finally, the optimal labor income tax rate moves countercyclically for low degree of intratemporal elasticity of substitution, while it moves procyclically for high degree of intratemporal elasticity of substitution.

Based on a multisector general equilibrium framework, we show that the sectoral elasticity of substitution plays the key role in the evolution of asymmetric tails of macroeconomic fluctuations and the establishment of robustness against productivity shocks. A non-unitary elasticity of substitution renders a nonlinear Domar aggregation, where normal sectoral productivity shocks translate into non-normal aggregated shocks with variable expected output growth. We empirically estimate 100 sectoral elasticities of substitution, using the time-series linked input-output tables for Japan and find that the production economy is elastic overall, relative to a Cobb-Douglas economy with unitary elasticity. In addition to the previous assessment of an inelastic production economy for the USA, the contrasting tail asymmetry of the distribution of aggregated shocks between the USA and Japan is explained. Moreover, the robustness of an economy is assessed by expected output growth, the level of which is led by the sectoral elasticities of substitution under zero-mean productivity shocks.

We estimate the elasticity of substitution between high-skill and low-skill workers using panel data from 32 countries during 1970–2015. Most existing estimates, which are based only on US microdata, find a value close to 1.6. We bring international data together with a theory-informed macro-approach to provide new evidence on this important macroeconomic parameter. Using the macro-approach, we find that the elasticity of substitution between tertiary-educated workers and those with lower education levels falls between 1.7 and 2.6, which is higher than previous estimates but within a plausible range. In some specifications, estimated elasticity is above the value required for strong skill-bias of technology, suggesting strong skill-bias is possible.

We generalize the normalized constant elasticity of substitution (CES) production function by allowing the elasticity of substitution to vary isoelastically with (i) the relative factor share, (ii) the marginal rate of substitution, (iii) the capital–labor ratio, (iv) the capital share, (v) the capital’s rate of return, or (vi) the capital–output ratio. Ensuing isoelastic elasticity of substitution (IEES) functions have intuitively and analytically desirable properties, for example, self-duality. Empirically, for the post-war US economy we robustly reject the CES specification in favor of the IEES alternative. Assuming the IEES production structure we find that the capital–labor elasticity of substitution has remained around 0.8–0.9 from 1948 to the 1980s, followed by a period of secular decline.

In this paper, we present a nonlinear model where the information and communication technology (ICT) sector is endogenized. In the model, there are two intermediate goods: a traditional good produced by capital and labor and the ICT good produced by innovative capital and skilled labor. The final good is obtained combining the two intermediate goods. The model is specified and estimated as continuous-time general disequilibrium framework. Our main results are the following. We find that the elasticity of substitution of the aggregate sector has a value intermediate between that of the ICT sector and that of the traditional sector, indicating that the input complementarity is tighter in the former than in the latter. Moreover, in all the sectors elasticities are well below 1. As for the traditional sector, whose share is predominant in the production of the final good, the input complementarity helps explain most of the labor share decline of Italian economy as a consequence of the slowdown in the growth of capital intensity. In the ICT sector, technological progress, both in the form of capital augmenting and capital bias, showed a decline over the sample period with an obvious negative consequence on the global evolution of the technical progress. The results about the dynamics of the two intermediate sectors allow to interpret the “Italian paradox” of an industrial structure marked by an increasing weight of the traditional sector and the difficulties encountered by the Italian economy in exiting from its actual worst recession since the 1930s.

“Buying local״ has become one of the most important trends in food marketing. Despite widespread public attention, the influence of the “local״ attribute on food prices is not well understood. We aim to begin to fill this gap in research by exploring the presence of a price premium for “local״ in actual market transactions. Using scanner data on fresh packaged lettuce in the Honolulu market and hedonic modeling, we investigate consumers’ revealed preferences for the attribute. Contrary to the positive willingness to pay for local food widely reported in previous studies, we find no local premium for fresh lettuce in the Honolulu market.

In previous work, we estimated a dynamic model of the Italian economy, showing that its weakness in the past two decades is mainly due to the slowdown in total factor productivity growth. In those models, two parameters play a key role: technological progress and the elasticity of substitution. Recent estimates of those parameters are affected, in our opinion, by a specification problem: technological parameters are inherently long-run but their estimates are based on short-run data. Looking deeply into the estimation procedure, we show that the misspecification issue present in the estimates gives rise to a spurious regression bias (high R2, low DW), because the standard approach does not incorporate frictions and rigidities. Our modeling strategy takes account of them. Although we cannot in general say that our framework gets rid of the serial correlation problem, the statistics for our model do show that residuals are not serially correlated.

In this paper, we examine the influence of monetary policy on the speed of convergence in a standard monetary growth model à la Sidrauski allowing for differences in the elasticity of substitution between factors of production. The respective changes in the rate of convergence and its sensitivities to the central model parameters are derived both analytically and numerically. By normalizing the constant elasticity of substitution (CES) production functions both outside the steady state and within the steady state, it is possible to distinguish between an efficiency and a distribution effect of a change in the elasticity of substitution. We show that monetary policy is the more effective, the lower is the elasticity of substitution, and that the impact of monetary policy on the speed of convergence is mainly channeled via the efficiency effect.

Although a realistic characterization of the production function is critical to macroeconomic analysis, estimating the function's characteristics is hampered by both data limitations and methodological difficulties. In this paper, I develop a new empirical strategy for estimating the CES production function with biased technical change. The proposed method extends the control function approach to the CES specification to address endogeneity concerns and is able to retrieve sector-specific and time-varying estimates of technical change. Using data from U.S. manufacturing industries, I find evidence that (i) the production technology exhibits nonincreasing returns to scale, (ii) the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor is below unity, and (iii) technical change is generally labor-augmenting along the balanced growth path.

This article utilizes the 2011 Nielsen scanner data for the Honolulu fresh tomato market to explore the existence of price premium for local food. Hedonic analysis is conducted to delineate the price impact of the local attribute. Contrary to the widely perceived local price premium in the consumer preference literature, mixed results of price premiums and discounts are discovered for local tomato products. Additional investigation suggests that the prices of local tomatoes are likely influenced by seasonal output fluctuation. The limited market distribution capacity facing local producers may have contributed further to the retail discounting.

We provide industry-level estimates of the elasticity of substitution (σ) between capital and labor in the United States. We also estimate rates of factor augmentation. Aggregate estimates are produced. Our empirical model comes from the first-order conditions associated with a constant–elasticity of substitution production function. Our data represent 35 industries at roughly the 2-digit SIC level, 1960–2005. We find that aggregate U.S. σ is likely less than 0.620. σ is likely less than unity for a large majority of individual industries. Evidence also suggests that aggregate σ is less than the value-added share-weighted average of industry σ's. Aggregate technical change appears to be net labor–augmenting. This also appears to be true for the large majority of individual industries, but several industries may be characterized by net capital augmentation. When industry-level elasticity estimates are mapped to model sectors, the manufacturing sector σ is lower than that of services; the investment sector σ is lower than that of consumption.

We develop a framework for measuring and analyzing medium-run departures from balanced growth, and apply it to developments in the euro area. A time-varying factor-augmenting production function (mimicking directed technical change) with below-unitary substitution elasticity is shown to account for the observed dynamics of factor incomes shares, TFP growth, and its components. Based on careful data accounting, we also identify a rising markup and the importance of financial-market regulations in the 1970s. The balanced growth path emerges as a special (and testable) case of our framework, as do existing strands of medium-run debates.

This paper provides a unified approach to characterizing the relation between factor substitution and economic growth in different one-sector growth models (namely, the Solow, Ramsey, and Diamond models). Our main finding is that if better factor substitution raises savings in the steady state, then a higher per capita income results. There are two channels by which factor substitution affects savings: the positive efficiency effect via income and the ambiguous distribution effect via factor income shares. If the efficiency effect dominates, then a higher elasticity of substitution leads to a higher level of per capita steady-state income. In transition, factor substitution affects the rate of convergence both directly and through the equilibrium profit share. The former arises from diminishing marginal productivity of capital whereas the latter reflects its relative scarcity. Depending on the interaction of these effects, the net outcomes are characterized.

This paper characterizes the elasticity of factor substitution in one-sector convex growth models with a general production function. It shows that an elasticity of substitution that is asymptotically greater than unity is a sufficient (but not a necessary) condition for the existence of a lower bound on the marginal product of capital, which in turn can lead to unbounded endogenous growth. Hence, an elasticity of substitution that eventually becomes greater than unity can counteract the role of diminishing returns to capital. This renders factor substitution a powerful engine of growth.