New U.S. evidence from NIPA contradicts some of the well-known Kaldor
stylized facts, and call for a reformulation of the modern theory of
economic growth. Among these new facts, two must be stressed: A permanent
decline in the relative price of durable goods, and a permanent increase in
the real equipment to real GDP ratio. To be consistent with these new facts,
growth models must include at least two sectors and address the problem of
defining aggregate output. In this paper, the economic theory of index
numbers is used to define the growth rate of real output in a growth model
with embodied technical change. The main findings are: (i) NIPA’s
methodology measures growth in accordance with the economic theory on index
numbers, and (ii) when the growth rate is measured as in NIPA, the
contribution of embodied technical change to per capital GDP growth in the
U.S. is 69%, which reinforce the claim that embodied technical change is
important for growth.