Distributed Time Delay Energy Model for Sustainable Economic Growth: Some Remarks in the Spirit of Horizon 2020

Today the research into the basic principles for the modeling of economic growth is a new and topical challenge which has been the object of much investigation. Ever since 1862 Spencer has advocated that the economic growth of societies depends on their capability to exploit the increasing amounts of energy. Accordingly, the quantity of energy that a society consumes becomes an economic tool to measure its progress and thus the capital accumulation represents an important strategy for the growth process. In particular, the Solow model, which involves the aggregate production function, has made an important contribution to the economic growth theory especially because it is able to explain the differences between countries in GDP per worker. However, as discussed in Dalgaard and Strulik, the derivation of the law of movement of capital without recurring to the existence of an aggregate production function could be more appropriate. The main aim of this study is to shed light on what effects the delays can generate in an economy viewed as a transport network for energy where the law of the movement of capital occurs with a distributed delay. We have established a set of conditions in which a stationary state loses stability and oscillatory dynamics emerge through Hopf bifurcations.