• growth theory
• production function
• energy
• econometrics
• history

The main purpose of the thesis is analysing how energy has been taken into account by economics, particularly in growth theory, and understand its role in modern history development.
An introductory survey suggests to focus on the work of Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, Vachal Smil, Reinar Kummel, Dietmar Linderberger, David I. Stern and Robert U. Ayres, scholars who attempted to introduce and apply the Second Law of Thermodynamics in economics.
Then, the thesis critically analyses Kummel’s Linex (LINear EXponential) function and his KLEC (capital, labour, energy and creativity) model, in order to understand the growing contribution of energy into the increasing automation of production processes, understanding social consequences by stressing the relation among labour, capital and energy and their substitutability.
This approach is tested by an econometric analysis applied to the USA for the period 1960-2014 on data of Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis, U.S. Energy Information Administration and Bureau of Labor Statistics. The analysis, which it also includes a sectoral analysis, uses both parametric and non-parametric methods and control for spatially correlated omitted variables.