The Evolutionary Voluntary Pattern Technology in a Western European Union Country

This paper focuses the field of energy and economic development. It studies the type of the Portuguese technological evolution during the last quarter of the twentieth century using a special putty-clay production function with energy consumption as input. In methodological terms we may say that the paper departs from a transformed variable elasticity of substitution (VES) production function (the translog function) applied to the Portuguese economy. The main factors or inputs are capital, labour and imported energy (usually more than 80% of the primary Portuguese energetic needs). A Zellner method is used to estimate a system of seemingly unrelated regression equations (SURE). The main objectives of this paper are: (i) the estimation of the transformed translog function; (ii) the utilization of these results to study the evolution of the Portuguese technological progress during the last decades, (iii) the study of the characteristics of the Portuguese technological progress (this evolutionary process in terms of energy consumption - is it energy-using or energy-saving?), and (iv) the study of the Portuguese positioning in the international controversy relative to the energy-capital relation (are these two inputs complements or substitutes?). In terms of organisation the paper presents, 1st, the methodological framework, 2nd the description of the estimation process, 3rd the empirical application, 4th the interpretation of the empirical results found, either in terms of the translog production function parameters or in terms of the elasticities obtained, and 5th the country's position in the capital-energy inputs' complementarity-substituibility controversy.