Measuring the Contribution of Public Infrastructure Capital in Sweden

Our purpose in this paper is to examine how one might evaluate and measure the contribution of public infrastructure capital on private sector output and productivity growth in Sweden. We do this by specifying and implementing empirically a number of alternative econometric models, using annual data for Sweden from 1960 to 1988. Using a dual cost function approach, we find that increases in public infrastructure capital, ceteris paribus, reduce private sector costs. We compute that amount of public infrastructure capital that would rationalize the cost savings incurred by the private business and manufacturing sectors, and find that the amount that can be rationalized in this manner is less than what was in fact available in 1988, but that the extent of excess public infrastructure capital has been falling in the 1980's.

Price Indexes for Microcomputers: An Exploratory Study

In this paper we focus on alternative procedures for calculating and interpreting quality-adjusted price indexes for microcomputers, based on a variety of estimated hedonic price equations. Our data set comprises an unbalanced panel for 1265 model observations from 1982 to 1988, and includes both list and discount prices. We develop and implement empirically a specification test for selecting preferable hedonic price equations, and consider in detail the alternative interpretations of dummy variable coefficients having time and age, vintage and age, and all of the time, age, and vintage dummy variables as regressors. We then calculate a variety of quality-adjusted price indexes; for the Divisja indexes we employ estimated hedonic price equations to predict prices of unobserved models (pre-entry and post-exit). Although our indexes show a modest amount of variation, we find that on average over the 1982-88 time period in the US, quality-adjusted real prices for microcomputers decline at about 28% per year.

Energy use, technical progress and productivity growth : a survey of economic issues

This is a survey paper for non-specialists on interactions between energy and productivity growth. The first half of the paper surveys the general economic literature linking technical progress to realized gains in productivity growth. The second half of the survey focuses in particular on the important role of energy in linking technical progress to productivity growth, and contains an overview of a great deal of literature, both classic and recent.Supported by the MIT Center for Energy Policy Research

Costs, Institutional Mobility Barriers, and Market Structure: Advertising Agencies as Multiproduct Firms

What accounts for the diversity and limited concentration that has long characterized the organization of the advertising agency industry? This question is addressed by treating an advertising agency as a multiproduct firm. The firm's product line or service mix is defined in terms of the set of different media categories where an agency places the advertising messages which it creates on behalf of its clients. Evidence is presented indicating that the structure of demand and costs in the advertising agency industry conforms to the conditions that MacDonald and Slivinski (1987) showed were required for an industry to sustain an equilibrium with diversified firms. Building on this framework, we formulate a set of three hypotheses relating to the realization of product-specific scale and scope economies. The first two hypotheses posit that given low fixed costs and minimal entry barriers, both media-specific scale and scope economies are available and can be exploited by relatively small-size agencies. The third hypothesis suggests that large agencies may experience diseconomies of scope as a consequence of excessive diversification induced by two pervasive industry institutional phenomena: (i) 'bundling' of agency services to match client demand for a mix of media advertising; and (ii) 'conflict policy' which prohibits an agency from serving competing accounts and operates as a mobility constraint. Utilizing a multiproduct cost function, we estimate media-specific scale and scope economies for a cross-section of 401 U.S. agencies in 1987. The results obtained support the set of three hypotheses outlined above.