The investment acceleration principle revisited by means of a neural network

The investment acceleration principle is a heuristic for modelling a investment time series out of a consumption time series. The model presented herein develops a disaggregated accelerator equation whose coefficients are the weights of a Kohonen neural net that represents firms' decision-making. According to this model, investments take place when managers recognise emerging technological patterns. Furthermore, a technique borrowed from the theory of self-organising systems is used in order to disentangle innovation-driven investments from plant-replication investments.