Energy and technical progress

When we use the Cobb-Douglas equation to investigate economic growth, we require data on the levels of the capital and labor inputs, and corresponding data on the level of output, at different points in time. We conclude that the inclusion of energy in the standard Cobb Douglas production function does not explain the contribution of technological process (Hicks-neutral) to a rise in the rate of output unless, possibly, one is able to make the seemingly unreasonable assumption that labor should not appear in the production function. An interesting future project will be a statistical analysis of the historic trend in GNP, a technological change and the consumption of available energy.