Econométrie de la production sur données de panel et dispersion des prix de production quels biais d'estimation ?

The lack of individual information on output prices is a major problem of the econometrics of production, which in particular could account for a significant part of the large discrepancies found in panel data studies between the cross-sectional and time series estimates of capital and scale elasticities. In this work, we have been able to obtain such information on firm output prices, as well as information on firm rates of capacity utilization, for a panel of about 450French manufacturing firms over four years. Whether we rely on the usual panel data estimation methods or use generalized methods of moments (GMM), our expectations are not confirmed, and the various estimations remain practically unaffected by taking into account or not the dispersion of changes in output prices and in capacity utilization. It is likely that the biases arising from other sources of specification errors are more important.