Capital Biased Technological Progress: It Doesn't Just Happen

Paul Krugman has been rightly troubled by the continuing shift of income shares from labor to capital. However the explanation he considers in the form of capital-biased technological progress requires a little more careful examination.

Krugman discusses the case where there is an exogenous change in the nature of technology that makes capital relatively more productive than labor. This leads to more capital being used, driving up its price, and less labor being used, driving down its price (...