R&D, Structural Transformation, and the Distribution of Income

Chapter in NBER book The Economics of Artificial Intelligence: An Agenda (2019), Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb, editors (p. 329 - 348)
Conference held September 13-14, 2017
Published in May 2019 by University of Chicago Press
© 2019 by the National Bureau of Economic Research

The US economy is characterized by science-led growth that is inherently unbalanced. There is a long-term shift in the share of national income from labor to capital, including physical, human, and intellectual capital. This shift was partially obscured in the past by including both labor income and human capital income within the traditional measure of labor income. The digital revolution will continue to shift national income from labor towards capital. I introduce a stylized computable general-equilibrium model to explore these long-term trends.

https://www.nber.org/chapters/c14014