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Energy Distribution, Power Laws, and Economic Growth

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  • Dalgaard, Carl-Johan
  • Strulik, Holger

Abstract

The natural sciences have established a general scaling law that relates metabolism and body size of animals. Recently this association - known as Kleiber's law - has received deep theoretical foundation by network theory and has been fruitfully applied to explain various biological phenomena, in particular ontogenetic growth. Here we derive a similar power law for economic metabolism (energy consumption per capita) and economic size (capital per capita). Invoking the power law we provide a metabolic-energetic founded law of motion for capital per capita. Using data for the U.S. states we test the resulting structural model and find evidence in favor of a scaling parameter, between energy and capital per capita, of about 2/3.

Suggested Citation

  • Dalgaard, Carl-Johan & Strulik, Holger, 2008. "Energy Distribution, Power Laws, and Economic Growth," Hannover Economic Papers (HEP) dp-385, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät.
    • Handle: RePEc:han:dpaper:dp-385
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
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    Keywords

    Economic Growth; Energy; Metabolism; Power Laws; Networks;
    All these keywords.

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