The time profile approach to production with an application to gestation lags

This paper proposes a unified framework to analyse the effect of different features of the time profile of production. The paper starts considering that features as the schedule of capital depreciation or possible installation costs and gestation lags can be analysed together. This is done by a generalisation of the vintage model in the setting proposed by Benhabib and Rustichini (1991) that considers the time profile of production as a whole, putting together the cost of the investment and its in-time consequences. Another direction of this generalisation is to cast it in a case of endogenous growth models. We use this method in the specific case of gestation lags to analyse and give economic meaning to the stability properties of the steady growth solution of consumption, and the non linear dynamics of investment paths associated to this base case of time-to-build.