ENDOGENOUS STRUCTURAL-CHANGE AND CRISIS IN A MULTIPLE TIME-SCALES GROWTH-MODEL

The slow and endogenous twist of economic macro-structure makes up an important evolutionary feature of capitalist economies, and may be at the root of structural crisis. In this line, a Goodwinian growth model with increasing returns and profit-sharing that tries to picture a si mple scenario of the seventies crisis is considered. It is shown that the exhaustion of the Kaldor-Verdoorn ''productivity law'' can entail, in a nonlinear framework, a ''catastrophic'' bifurcation from a ''hig h'' to a ''low'' growth path. Slow/fast dynamical systems then allow o ne to formalize a multiple time-scales dynamics where the growth path is shaped by the structural framework in which it takes place, but has also a long -un feedback. Structural change and crisis appear as long term and endogenous outcomes.