Three Essays on Technological Innovation and Economic Growth

This dissertation aims to study the relationship between economic growth and technological innovation regarding the neokaleckian approach to growth and income distribution. In addition, we discusses the complementarity between human capital and innovation. The work was divided into three essays. Essay I shows the development of a model in which the strategic interaction between intentional generation of labor-saving technological innovation, by means of research and development (R&D), and the quality of human capital in the economy is explicitly formalized. We argue that the two factors are complementary. On the one hand, innovation requires high-quality human capital; on the other hand, qualitative changes in human capital will generate impact on the macroeconomic variables of the system only if technological innovation occurs. In Essay II, an extension of the model contained in Essay I is developed by means of the introduction of a behavioral heterogeneity between firms regarding innovation. Thus, the homogeneity of the representative firm disappears. In its place, a scenario of uncertainty emerges, where firms are faced with two strategies available: to innovate - via R&D spending - or not to innovate. The benefit of innovation is the rise in labor productivity. However, due to the costs involved in this process, not all firms innovate. A model of evolutionary game is used with the aim of assessing the impact of the microeconomic heterogeneity on the dynamics of the economy, the degree of capacity utilization and the economic growth. Essay III empirically investigates the existence of a long run relationship, as well as the direction of the existing causality between real wages and labor productivity with regard to Brazil within the period between 1955 and 2008. For this purpose, both Johansen\'s cointegration test and Granger causality test were performed. In the theoretical models developed in Essays I and II, we argued that variations in the average real wages precedes variations in labor productivity. However, with regard to the essay concerning Brazil, it was found that causality took the opposite direction, i.e., variations in labor productivity preceded variation in real wages over the analyzed period of time (AU)