JPA revised manuscript 3nd round 4-12-2015.pdf (264.79 kB)
Estimating economies of scale and scope with flexible technology
journal contribution
posted on 2016-07-11, 12:12 authored by Thomas TriebsThomas Triebs, David SaalDavid Saal, Pablo Arocena, Subal C. KumbhakarEconomies of scope are typically modelled and estimated using a cost function that is common to all firms in an industry irrespective of their type, e.g. whether they specialize in a single output or produce multiple outputs. Instead, we estimate a flexible technology model that allows for type-specific technologies and show how it can be estimated using linear parametric forms including the translog. A common technology remains a special case of our model and is testable econometrically. Our sample, of publicly owned US electric utilities, does not support a common technology for integrated and specialized firms. Our empirical results therefore suggest that assuming a common technology might bias estimates of economies of scale and scope. Thus, how we model the production technology clearly influences the policy conclusions we draw from its characteristics.
Funding
Pablo Arocena and David Saal acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (project ECO2010-21242-C03-03).
History
School
- Business and Economics
Department
- Economics
Published in
JOURNAL OF PRODUCTIVITY ANALYSISVolume
45Issue
2Pages
173 - 186 (14)Citation
TRIEBS, T.P. ... et al, 2016. Estimating economies of scale and scope with flexible technology. Journal of Productivity Analysis, 45 (2), pp. 173 - 186.Publisher
© Springer Science+Business MediaVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Publication date
2016-02-18Notes
The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11123-016-0467-1ISSN
0895-562XPublisher version
Language
- en