In this paper I concern the problem of properly specifying the structure of technology of French manufacturing industry, when capital is treated as quasi-fixed input. However instead of choosing a single functional form as an approximation to the variable cost function, modified versions of...

In this paper we report results of a rather successful attempt to provide evidence on the substitution possibilities between capital, labour, and energy in the three branches of French manufacturing industry. In order to assess the sensitivity of results to the choice of the functional form and...

We investigate the behavior of three versions of the translog cost function: the standard Log-quadratic version and two nonlinear versions with exponential and linear technical progress biases, respectively. Their performances are assessed according to three criteria: (i) on theoretical ground,...

In this paper we attempt to provide evidence on the structure of technology in the three industrial branches of French economy, when capital is treated as quasi-fixed input. However instead of choosing a single functional form as an approximation to the variable cost function, modified versions...

We investigate the behaviour of three flexible forms of the cost Function: the Translog, which is the most used in empirical analyses, Generalized Leontief and Symmetric Generalized McFadden, which both have also become popular. Their performances are evaluated by their abilities (i) to respect...

Several recent papers argue that contracts provide reference points that affect ex post behavior. We test this hypothesis in a canonical buyer-seller relationship with renegotiation. Our paper provides causal experimental evidence that an initial contract has a highly significant and...

We present an international trade model with multiproduct firms. Firms are heterogeneously endowed with two types of capabilities that jointly determine the trade-off within firms between managing a large portfolio of products and producing at low marginal cost. The model can explain many of the...

This paper reports data from a laboratory experiment on two-period moral hazard problems. The findings corroborate the contract-theoretic insight that even though the periods are technologically unrelated, due to incentive considerations principals can benefit from offering long-term contracts...

We study a continuous-time game of strategic experimentation in which the players try to assess the failure rate of some new equipment or technology. Breakdowns occur at the jump times of a Poisson process whose unknown intensity is either high or low. In marked contrast to existing models, we...