Decomposing Structural Change

Abstract We identify the mechanisms governing the propagation of technological shocks to the sectoral allocation of labor in a non-parameterized growth model. These propagation mechanisms are: (i) the change in aggregate income; whose effect on sectoral composition depends on the income elasticities of consumption demand; (ii) the change in the relative prices of consumption goods, which alters the sectoral composition depending on the Allen-Uzawa elasticities of substitution between goods; (iii) the change in the rental rates, whose effect on sectoral composition is determined by the sectoral elasticities of substitution between capital and labor; and, (iv) the direct effect of the sector and factor bias of the technological change. From this analysis, we derive an accounting method to measure the contribution of these propagation mechanisms to structural change in parameterized growth models. By using some well-known parameterizations, we account for the contribution of each mechanism to the U.S. structural change in the period 1948–2010.