Technical Progress, Elasticity of Substitution and Returns to Scale in Branches of Soviet Industry: Some New Empirical Evidence Using Soviet Republic Data, 1961-74

Abstract

In this paper, the author provides estimates of the rate of technical progress and the degree of returns to scale experienced by the nine major branches of Soviet industry. The results reveal that different production functio ns (the Cobb-Douglas, CES, and Kmenta approximation) and different es timation techniques (ordinary least squares, instrumental variables, and maximum likelihood) give similar, if not identical, results. Copyright 1988 by Blackwell Publishers Ltd and The Victoria University of Manchester