DIRECT AND INDIRECT MEASURES OF CAPACITY UTILIZATION: A NON‐PARAMETRIC ANALYSIS OF US MANUFACTURING*

Subhash Ray, Kankana Mukherjee and Yanna Wu

Manchester School, 2006, vol. 74, issue 4, 526-548

Abstract: We measure the capacity output of a firm as the maximum amount producible by a firm given a specific quantity of the quasi‐fixed input and an overall expenditure constraint for its choice of variable inputs. We compute this indirect capacity utilization measure for the total manufacturing sector in the USA as well as for a number of disaggregated industries, for the period 1970–2001. We find considerable variation in capacity utilization rates both across industries and over years within industries. Our results suggest that the expenditure constraint was binding, especially in periods of high interest rates.

Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9957.2006.00507.x

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:manchs:v:74:y:2006:i:4:p:526-548

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=1463-6786

Access Statistics for this article

Manchester School is currently edited by Keith Blackburn

More articles in Manchester School from University of Manchester Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().