Growth with unused capacity and endogenous capital depreciation

The paper contributes to the debate on growth and distribution in a non-mainstream perspective. It looks at the role that capacity utilization plays in the process of growth under the hypothesis that the rate of capital depreciation is a function of the degree of capacity utilization. Our hypothesis implies results partly different from those obtained by other models in which capacity utilization plays a key role. In particular, a varying rate of depreciation affects the conditions under which distributional changes in favor of wages affect the rate of growth positively. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.