Aggregate production functions, growth economics, and the part-time tyranny of the identity: a reply to Felipe and McCombie

A recent paper by Jesus Felipe and John McCombie argues that I have understated the importance of the value added identity for conventional estimates of production relationships. This reply seeks to clarify the areas of agreement and disagreement. It suggests that the problems raised by the accounting identity are genuine and deserve to be more widely known, but Felipe and McCombie have sometimes exaggerated the scope of the argument.