IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/rjr/romjef/vy2013i2p70-86.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Cost Minimization under Variable Input Prices: A Theoretical Approach

Author

Listed:
  • Agapie, Adriana

    (Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Romania)

  • Lima, Tony

    (California State University East Bay, Hayward, CA, USA,)

Abstract

It is generally admitted that fixed, low input prices for resources cause distortions in the input mix, in the sense of inefficient usage of resources.We consider a particular homogeneous functional form for representing the potential distortions in the input factor quantities in the context of deriving Cobb-Douglas cost functions and such a representation can offer a justification for why the average cost may behave eratically, altghough the technology remains unchanged. Fixed input prices become a special case. Our generalized form of Shepard3’s lemma allows us to interpret the corresponding input prices’s homogeneity orders as measures of the efficiency wages.

Suggested Citation

  • Agapie, Adriana & Lima, Tony, 2013. "Cost Minimization under Variable Input Prices: A Theoretical Approach," Journal for Economic Forecasting, Institute for Economic Forecasting, vol. 0(2), pages 70-86, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:rjr:romjef:v::y:2013:i:2:p:70-86
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ipe.ro/rjef/rjef2_13/rjef2_2013p70-86.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Blinder, Alan S, 1982. "Inventories and Sticky Prices: More on the Microfoundations of Macroeconomics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(3), pages 334-348, June.
    2. Mas-Colell, Andreu & Whinston, Michael D. & Green, Jerry R., 1995. "Microeconomic Theory," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195102680.
    3. Emilian Dobrescu, 2013. "Restatement of the I-O Coefficient Stability Problem," Journal of Economic Structures, Springer;Pan-Pacific Association of Input-Output Studies (PAPAIOS), vol. 2(1), pages 1-67, December.
    4. Gordon, Robert J, 1981. "Output Fluctuations and Gradual Price Adjustment," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 19(2), pages 493-530, June.
    5. Robert E. Hall, 1980. "Employment Fluctuations and Wage Rigidity," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 11(1, Tenth ), pages 91-142.
    6. Emilian Dobrescu, 2009. "Estimating the Total Factor Productivity in Romanian Economy," The AMFITEATRU ECONOMIC journal, Academy of Economic Studies - Bucharest, Romania, vol. 11(26), pages 512-521, June.
    7. Mortensen, Dale T, 1970. "Job Search, the Duration of Unemployment, and the Phillips Curve," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 60(5), pages 847-862, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alan S. Blinder, 1990. "Learning by Asking Those Who Are Doing," Eastern Economic Journal, Eastern Economic Association, vol. 16(4), pages 297-306, Oct-Dec.
    2. Blinder, Alan S & Maccini, Louis J, 1991. "The Resurgence of Inventory Research: What Have We Learned?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 5(4), pages 291-328.
    3. Treb Allen, 2014. "Information Frictions in Trade," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 82, pages 2041-2083, November.
    4. Gauger, Jean Ann, 1984. "Three essays on the neutrality of anticipated money growth," ISU General Staff Papers 198401010800008758, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    5. Blinder, Alan S, 1991. "Why Are Prices Sticky? Preliminary Results from an Interview Study," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(2), pages 89-96, May.
    6. Christopher J. Nekarda & Valerie A. Ramey, 2020. "The Cyclical Behavior of the Price‐Cost Markup," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 52(S2), pages 319-353, December.
    7. Hillen, Judith & Fedoseeva, Svetlana, 2021. "E-commerce and the end of price rigidity?," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 63-73.
    8. repec:eee:labchp:v:2:y:1986:i:c:p:1001-1035 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Dexter, Albert S. & Levi, Maurice D. & Nault, Barrie R., 2002. "Sticky prices: the impact of regulation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(4), pages 797-821, May.
    10. John F. Helliwell & Alan Chung, 1985. "Aggregate Output with Operating Rates and Inventories as Buffers BetweenVariable Final Demand and Quasi-Fixed Factors," NBER Working Papers 1623, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Simon Hall & Mark Walsh & Anthony Yates, 1997. "How do UK companies set prices?," Bank of England working papers 67, Bank of England.
    12. Victor Zarnowitz, 1989. "Cost and Price Movements in Business Cycle Theories and Experience: Hypotheses of Sticky Wages and Prices (SEE ALSO WP3132-send out together)," NBER Working Papers 3131, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Michael J. Hicks, 2007. "Hierarchical delays as a source of nominal price rigidities: evidence from the microcomputer industry," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(7), pages 803-815.
    14. Gu, Gyun Cheol, 2012. "Denial, Rationalization, and the Administered Price Thesis," MPRA Paper 42594, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Wright, Austin L. & Sonin, Konstantin & Driscoll, Jesse & Wilson, Jarnickae, 2020. "Poverty and economic dislocation reduce compliance with COVID-19 shelter-in-place protocols," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 544-554.
    16. Jolian McHardy & Michael Reynolds & Stephen Trotter, 2012. "The Stackelberg Model as a Partial Solution to the Problem of Pricing in a Network," Working Paper series 19_12, Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis.
    17. Janvier D. Nkurunziza, 2005. "Reputation and Credit without Collateral in Africa`s Formal Banking," Economics Series Working Papers WPS/2005-02, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    18. Stephanie Rosenkranz & Patrick W. Schmitz, 2007. "Can Coasean Bargaining Justify Pigouvian Taxation?," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 74(296), pages 573-585, November.
    19. Vadim Borokhov, 2014. "On the properties of nodal price response matrix in electricity markets," Papers 1404.3678, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2015.
    20. Yuzhou Jiang & Ramteen Sioshansi, 2023. "What Duality Theory Tells Us About Giving Market Operators the Authority to Dispatch Energy Storage," The Energy Journal, , vol. 44(3), pages 89-110, May.
    21. Daniel Sutter & Daniel J. Smith, 2017. "Coordination in disaster: Nonprice learning and the allocation of resources after natural disasters," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 30(4), pages 469-492, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    average cost; returns to scale; production; cost minimization; input supply function; marginal rate of technical substitution;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity
    • C00 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - General - - - General
    • O30 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - General
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:rjr:romjef:v::y:2013:i:2:p:70-86. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Corina Saman (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ipacaro.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.