The factors of production are well the Ressources, material or not, used in the process of Production of S and service S.
Evolution of the concept: classical economics with the economy of the knowledge
The economists of the traditional school retained three factors of production, formalized by Adam Smith: ground, the Capital and the work.
Today, the neo-classic economists retain only two factors of production, labor and capital. The capital factor breaks up into several subelements:
- the Capital physique (real, materials of production, goods durable, etc), which increases with the investment and, without investment, decrease with the wire of time (according to a rate of depreciation of the capital).
- the Human capital , which corresponds to the knowledge accumulated by human and mobilizable ones to work (training, training of engineer, experiment, etc)
- the immaterial Capital , term developed by the economy of the knowledge, which corresponds to the value accumulated by a company in the form of organization, of Savoir-faire accumulated, or Brand image. The economy of the developed Pays depends more and more on the immaterial capital.
- one also speaks about Authorized capital, and cultural Capital, like explanatory variables of the improvement of the Productivité not resulting from the other factors.
- the factor “ground and basement” (moreover more and more in more arranged by the hand of the man) belonged to the capital:
- either like a component of a broader natural factor, the Natural resources including the Biodiversity (concept of Capital naturalness raising questions about the type of Durability),
- or like the land component of the capital (land and buildings).
To simplify, the four independent factors of production nowadays appear to be as follows:
- work material,
- Capital naturalness,
- Capital physique,
- Capital immaterial (know-how, organization, Intangible assets if they are entered), immaterial work, the to know
The Investissement makes it possible to increase the volume of the factors of production. The Formation can be regarded as a form of investment, since it increases the capacities of the Travailleur.
Optimization of the factors, productivity, development
In an economy of the scarcity, the optimal combination of these elements for each produced or service offered on the market what is called determines generally the intensity of the factors . One will speak thus, on the level of the quantity of Capital used per produced unit, “of capital intensive intensity ”.
In a dynamic economy (= in permanent change), the Economic growth is assured:
- either by an increase in the quantities of mobilized factors of production,
- or by an improvement of the productive combination so that the same quantity of factors generates more produced.
- is by the technological advance (in the Modèle of Solow), which increases the total Productivité factors.
By regarding GDP as a function of the capital and work, the growth results from three parameters:
-
quantity of Capital used,
- quantity of work (and to know) used,
- and the total Productivité of the factors.
The new theories of the growth and the Economic development endeavor to make productivity an endogenous factor, which one explains by variables such as:
-
effort of Research and development, and the Investment in work (effort of formation). There one joined the concept mentioned above of capital-knowledge.
- effort of collective investment in Infrastructure S (road, of telecommunication). Although that is comparable to physical capital. but one can add to it the institutional infrastructures, close to the capital-knowledge: Systems legal, lawful, monetary, educational, etc
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