Any serious empirical study of factor substitutability has to allow the data to display complementarity as well as substitutability. The standard approach reflecting this idea is a translog specification - this is also the approach used by numerous studies analyzing the relative capital-skill...

This study deals with the determinants of factor demand in 27 industries of the manufacturing sector during the period 1978 to 1990. Using a quadratic cost function, six production factors are distinguished : capital, energy, three types of labour and intermediate materials. A parametric test of...

In this paper, substitutional relationships between capital, labour, material, electricity, and fossil fuels in German producing and service sectors are estimated using a translog cost function. Estimates are based on a pooled time-series cross-sectional data sample for the period 1978-90 and...

In this paper, four commonly provided explanations for the shift in labour demand for different skill groups are investigated: the substitutability of inputs; the own-price sensitivity for different types of labour; the effect of economic growth and the impact of technological change. In...

This paper examines the extent to which aggregate-level de-routinization can be attributed to firm-level technology adoption during the most recent technological expansion. We use administrative data and a novel firm survey to distinguish frontier technologies from older technologies. We find...