Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 March 2016
In overlapping-generations economies with life-cycle saving and exogenous growth, the laissez-faire equilibrium balanced growth path fails in general to achieve optimality, but is dynamically efficient if the marginal product of physical capital is greater than the growth rate of the economy. In this paper, we accommodate the concept of dynamic (in)efficiency in an overlapping-generations economy with endogenous growth due to human capital accumulation. We show that the condition that the marginal product of physical capital is larger than the growth rate of the economy is necessary but no longer sufficient for the dynamic efficiency of the laissez-faire equilibrium balanced growth path.
We are grateful to two anonymous referees for their helpful comments on an earlier version. We also acknowledge financial support from Instituto de Estudios Fiscales (Spanish Ministry of Finance), the Spanish Ministry of Science (Projects ECO2013-45395-R and ECO2012-37572) and the Generalitat de Catalunya (Contracts 2014SGR1360 and 2014SGR327 and the XREPP).