Alternative Technological Indices and Factor Demands in the Electric Power Industry

The role of technical progress as a means of extending energy resources, together with the widespread use of flexible functional forms, has led to increased interest in the estimation of nonneutral technical change in recent years. Studies by Binswanger (1974), Berndt and Khaled (1979), and Berndt and Wood (1982) at the aggregate level and Wills (1979), Toevs (1980), Moroney and Trapani (1981), and Jorgenson and Fraumeni (1981) at the sectoral level have provided estimates of biased technical change. Stevenson (1980), Gollop and Roberts (1981, 1983), and Nelson (1984, 1986) have also estimated models of nonneutral technical change for the electric power industry.Almost all these studies have two features in common. To begin with, they have employed a time trend to represent the rate at which new technology is introduced.' A recent study by Kopp and Smith (1985), however, indicates that time trends may fail to provide a consistent description of the direction of technical change and calls for the use of technologically explicit indicators of the pace of innovation.