From the theory of exogenous to endogenous economic growth: a conceptual journey

Abstract

Every society needs to expand and diversify its productive capacity. The challenge for nations and their governments is to achieve significant increases in income (per capita income) and in the way of life of individuals. The objective of this work is to account for the theoretical aspects that have determined the transition from exogenous to endogenous models. For this, a bibliographic research was developed, using a corpus based on the main economists who have approached the subject. As some results, a whole series of models known as exogenous growth have been developed since the mid-1940s, with capital and labor as main variables (Solow, 1956). However, it was determined that there is another factor that this model did not explicitly include, the developments after the Solow model (1956) were and are an effort to endogenize this third factor. It is concluded that the models after Solow (1956), especially those of Lucas (1988), Rebelo (1991) and Romer (1986), represented significant advances in covering the shortcomings of the exogenous models, but based on savings rates stable.