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SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme

SOE 15: Symposium SYEE: Energy Meets Economy: Dynamics and Statistics of Future Energy Systems

SOE 15.2: Invited Talk

Wednesday, April 2, 2014, 15:30–16:00, HSZ 02

Energy and the economy — •Reiner Kümmel — Institut für Theoretische Physik und Astrophysik, Universität Würzburg, Am Hubland, D-97074 Würzburg

Energy conversion and entropy production determine the growth of wealth in industrialized economies. Novel econometric analyses have revealed energy as a production factor whose output elasticity, which measures its economic weight, is much larger than its share in total factor cost, while for labor just the opposite is true. Although this result is at variance with neoclassical economic theory, it is compatible with the standard maximization of profit or time-integrated utility, if one takes technological constraints on capital, labor, and energy into account.