La forme flexible de Fourier: une évaluation sur données macroéconomiques

We estimate Translog and Fourier forms for three sectors of the French economy. The hypothesis that the former can be reduced to the latter is highly rejected. We show that the hypothesis of an endogenous technical change drops the autocorrelation of the disturbances in the Fourier case only. Finally we compute asymptotic confidence intervals of the elasticities of substitution for each year of our sample. Contrary to the Translog case, the results confirm that the evolutions of the Fourier elasticities have an economic sense.