The Mellon Institute's Energy Productivity Center (EPC) has recently completed a study asking the question, "How would the nation have provided energy services in 1978 if its capital stock had een reconfigured to be optimal for actual 1978 energy prices?" Interest in this question is motivated...

When energy prices increased suddenly and unexpectedly in 1973-74 and 1979-80, a portion of the long-lived capital stock in U.S. manufacturing was rendered economically less valuable. In this paper we develop an analytical framework, consistent with the theory of cost and production, that...