An Extended Cobb-Douglas Form for Use in Production Economics.

Abstract

The Cobb-Douglas function is widely used in production economics in the following form: A = AL sub alpha K sub beta, where alpha and beta along with A are positive constants that relate the inputs L (=Labor) and K (=Capital) to the amount of output Q. A variety of supposed alternatives and generalizations have been suggested in place of the Cobb-Douglas form for use in production economics. These alternatives and generalizations are here shown to be representable in an extended Cobb-Douglas form in which A, alpha and beta are functions of L an K rather than constants. This extension is then formally related to other general forms, such as the minimum discrimination information statistics, and used to explain the successful uses of the Cobb-Douglas function for the empirical applications in many different countries and contexts. Keywords: Production function; Aggregation; Homogenous functions.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 01, 1986
Accession Number
ADA186372

Entities

People

  • A. Charmes
  • A. P. Schinnar
  • William W. Cooper

Organizations

  • University of Texas at Austin

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Counter IED
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Convex Programming
  • Discrimination
  • Distribution Theory
  • Econometrics
  • Economic Analysis
  • Economics
  • Electrical Engineering
  • Geometric Programming
  • Inequalities
  • Information Theory
  • Mathematical Programming
  • Money
  • New York
  • Production
  • Social Sciences
  • Statistics
  • Theorems

Fields of Study

  • Economics

Readers

  • Calculus or Mathematical Analysis
  • Industrial Economics
  • Statistical inference.