A firm may cut costs by installing more parts than its products require. Each product or application requires a specified number of parts such as inductors, resistors and capacitors. For assembly and maintenance reasons, parts are grouped into subassembly modules. If there are economies of scale...

Recent papers have introduced specific input variables in unrestricted Cobb-Douglas functions to define production relationships and obtain measures of technological change for industries and sector classifications.¹ In a similar manner this paper incorporates the engineering, economic, and time...