A Brief History of Production Functions

Sudhanshu Mishra ()

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This paper gives an outline of evolution of the concept and econometrics of production function, which was one of the central apparatus of neo-classical economics. It shows how the famous Cobb-Douglas production function was indeed invented by von Thunen and Wicksell, how the CES production function was formulated, how the elasticity of substitution was made a variable and finally how Sato’s function incorporated biased technical changes. It covers almost all specifications proposed during 1950-1975, and further the LINEX production functions and incorporation of energy as an input. The paper in divided into (1) single product functions, (2) joint product functions, and (3) aggregate production functions. It also discusses the ‘capital controversy’ and its impacts.

Keywords: Production function; Cobb-Douglas; CES; Transcendental; translog; Zellner-Revankar; VES; Bruno; Kadiyala; Diewert; Kummel; Mundlak; Engineering production function; Multi-output; joint product; Data Envelopment; Household production function; Humbug production function; capital controversy; Cambridge controversy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B13 B16 C20 C30 D24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-10-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-eff, nep-his and nep-hpe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (33)

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Related works:
Journal Article: A Brief History of Production Functions (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:5254

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