We present a new method for imposing and testing concavity of cost functions using asymptotic least squares, which can be easily implemented even for nonlinear cost functions. We provide an illustration for a (generalized) Box-Cox cost function with six inputs: capital, labor disaggregated in...

The obvious difference in the economic performance of countries has led to the question why some countries are so much wealthier than others, and whether the size, the structure, and the organisation of the public sector contribute to cross-country income and growth gaps. Public sector...

This paper studies the aggregate substitution and expansion effects triggered by changes in input prices in a context where firms supply a homogeneous commodity and compete in quantities à la Cournot. We derive a sufficient condition for the existence of a Cournot equilibrium and show that this...

Many studies of producer behavior consider cost and input demand functions derived from microeconomic theory and estimate them on the basis of aggregate data. If the characteristics of the firms differ, the negligence of heterogeneity can lead to estimation bias. An alternative is to restrict...

This paper studies the aggregate substitution and expansion effects triggered by changes in input prices in a context where firms supply a homogeneous commodity and compete in quantities à la Cournot. We derive a sufficient condition for the existence of a Cournot equilibrium and show that this...

How people develop beliefs about themselves (self-theories) plays an important role on motivation and achievement as shown by Carol Dweck’s life-long research. In this paper, we conduct a field experiment to investigate whether self-theories impact overconfidence and risk taking. Self-theories...

This article provides a review of the recent literature in production analysis. The original contribution of this synthesis is to adopt the concept of virtual prices. Applied to nonlinear and intertemporal optimization problems, the framework of virtual prices is useful to retrieve properties of...