TY  - BOOK
AU  - Grossman,Gene M.
AU  - Helpman,Elhanan
ED  - National Bureau of Economic Research.
TI  - Quality Ladders in the Theory of Growth
T2  - NBER working paper series
PY  - 1989///
CY  - Cambridge, Mass.
PB  - National Bureau of Economic Research
N1  - September 1989; Hardcopy version available to institutional subscribers
N2  - We develop a model of repeated product improvements in a continuum of sectors. Each product follows a stochastic progression up a quality ladder. Progress is not uniform across sectors, so an equilibrium distribution of qualities evolves over time. But the rate of aggregate growth is constant. The growth rate responds to profit incentives in the R&D sector. We explore the welfare properties of our model. Then we relate our approach to an alternative one that views product innovation as a process of generating an ever expanding range of horizontally differentiated products. Finally, we apply the model to issues of resource accumulation and international trade
UR  - https://www.nber.org/papers/w3099
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.3386/w3099
ER  -