Increasing Returns and the Verdoorn Law from a Kaldorian Perspective

It is somewhat ironical that without Kaldor’s celebrated inaugural lecture of 1966 the widespread use of the term ‘Verdoorn’s Law’ (Verdoorn, 1949) to describe the relationship between productivity and output growth may never have come to pass. Moreover, Verdoorn himself made no further major contribution after his seminal 1949 paper to the extensive literature that has developed concerning the law. Indeed, the main impetus for the subsequent revival of interest in the law ironically may be traced back to Rowthorn’s (1975a) critique of Kaldor’s specification of the law. Verdoorn’s (1980) only other notable article was to reinterpret the law within a neoclassical framework and simultaneously to distance himself from it.2,3