Specification and Estimation of Technologies
{'Code': '04050100', 'Directorate': {'Abbreviation': 'SBE', 'LongName': 'Direct For Social, Behav & Economic Scie'}, 'Division': {'Abbreviation': 'SES', 'LongName': 'Divn Of Social and Economic Sciences'}}
{'SignBlockName': 'Lynn A. Pollnow', 'PO_EMAI': None, 'PO_PHON': None}
This project examines three topics in production analysis.  These are:          returns-to-scale and technical progress, the effects of imposing                regularity conditions, and direct estimation of production functions            from data on inputs and output.                                                                                                                                 Empirical estimation of the returns-to-scale and changes in technical           proficiency have long been central questions in the analysis of                 production.  Past work has typically specified constant returns and             technical progress due to the inherent econometric tractability.  This          project extends that work by incorporating production functions which           are non-homothetic in returns and technology, and are more realistic,           general, and flexible.                                                                                                                                          Investigation of the imposition of regularity conditions at every               point in the sample data addresses an important but often neglected             issue in empirical production analysis.  The theory underlying the              economics of production assumes that the conditions of monotonicity             and convexity apply to every combination of inputs and output.                  Empirical data often do not meet those conditions, and this project             systematically examines the effects of violating the regularity                 assumptions.                                                                                                                                                    The comparison of direct estimation of production functions with the            indirect method makes a fundamental contribution in empirical                   econometrics.  Estimating functions directly has the advantage of not           requiring data on factor prices nor does it assume cost minimization.           Estimating input demand systems with factor price data is often                 econometrically intractable.                                                                                                                                    This project addresses some important problems in the economic                  analysis of production.   Economic theory in regard to production is            quite well developed; indeed analyzing the interaction of production            and consumption has been a fundamental endeavor for many years.  From           an empirical standpoint, however, the analytical techniques are much            less straightforward.  Transferring the conditions imposed by economic          theory into empirical econometric analysis has proven to be quite               difficult, and often restricting assumptions about the data must be             made to render empirical analysis tractable.  These distinctions                between the theoretical models and the more tractable but simpler               empirical models are very important in that most decisions made by              production managers and policy makers are based on empirical analysis.          This work promises to provide insight into the importance of some               often-used empirical assumptions.                                                                                                                               By using various empirical specifications this project examines the             effects of some fundamental assumptions in production theory.  These            are:                                                                            1) returns-to-scale, which is the manner in which product output                changes with respect to changes in inputs.  Of particular importance            is the assumption that output will expand or contract in exact                  proportion to changes in input,                                                 2) regularity conditions, which imply that the theoretical properties           of the production function are met by all sample data values,                   3) direct versus indirect specification of the production function,             the former specification incorporating data on input and output                 quantities, the latter using only data on the prices of inputs.
{'FirstName': 'Robert', 'LastName': 'Pollak', 'PI_MID_INIT': 'A', 'PI_SUFX_NAME': None, 'PI_FULL_NAME': 'Robert A Pollak', 'EmailAddress': None, 'NSF_ID': '000229863', 'StartDate': '09/15/1988', 'EndDate': None, 'RoleCode': 'Principal Investigator'}
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{'Code': '9145', 'Text': 'SPECIAL PROGRAMS-RESERVE'}
{'url': 'https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/download?DownloadFileName=1987&All=true', 'xml': '8720761.xml'}