IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/10683.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Labour and capital saving technical change in telecommunications

Author

Listed:
  • Madden, Gary G
  • Bloch, Harry
  • Coble-Neal, Grant

Abstract

The Australian telecommunications sector is being improved and extended through substantial recent investment in intelligent technology such as digital switching, fibre optics, satellite and cellular transmission, and the Internet. These technologies are being progressively integrated with technology from the broadcasting, computer and electronics industries, providing a unified information infrastructure for information transmission and processing. Technological progress embodied in new equipment has the effect of increasing the efficiency of the factors of production. Such efficiency increases can be biased towards a particular factor. For instance, the impact of labour-augmenting technical change is a decline in the cost of labour per unit of production. When such biases are apparent the relativity between the costs of labour and capital per unit of production is changed. In the longer term, technical change can impact on the rate of employment growth and also on the rate of capital accumulation. In this study the Australian telecommunications cost structure is examined for the period 1919 to 1988. To measure labour saving and capital saving technical change a translog cost model is estimated. Multiproduct telecommunications cost studies typically employ the translog cost model (Evans and Heckman, 1984; Roller, 1990a; 1990b; Shin and Ying, 1992; McKenzie and Small, 1997). The translog model places no a priori restrictions on substitution possibilities among the factors of production, and allows scale economies to vary with the level of output.

Suggested Citation

  • Madden, Gary G & Bloch, Harry & Coble-Neal, Grant, 2002. "Labour and capital saving technical change in telecommunications," MPRA Paper 10683, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:10683
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/10683/1/MPRA_paper_10683.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Evans, David S & Heckman, James J, 1984. "A Test for Subadditivity of the Cost Function with an Application to the Bell System," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(4), pages 615-623, September.
    2. Diewert, Walter E & Wales, Terence J, 1987. "Flexible Functional Forms and Global Curvature Conditions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(1), pages 43-68, January.
    3. McKenzie, David J & Small, John P, 1997. "Econometric Cost Structure Estimates for Cellular Telephony in the United States," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 12(2), pages 147-157, September.
    4. Hulten, Charles R, 1992. "Growth Accounting When Technical Change Is Embodied in Capital," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(4), pages 964-980, September.
    5. Roller, Lars-Hendrik, 1990. "Proper Quadratic Cost Functions with an Application to the Bell System," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 72(2), pages 202-210, May.
    6. Charles R. Hulten, 1992. "Growth Accounting When Technical Change is Embodied in Capital," NBER Working Papers 3971, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Franklin M. Fisher, 1965. "Embodied Technical Change and the Existence of an Aggregate Capital Stock," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 32(4), pages 263-288.
    8. Richard T. Shin & John S. Ying, 1992. "Unnatural Monopolies in Local Telephone," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 23(2), pages 171-183, Summer.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rod Tyers, 2015. "Service Oligopolies and Australia's Economy-Wide Performance," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 48(4), pages 333-356, December.
    2. Judy Shaw-Er & Wang Chiang & Ya-Wen Chen, 2005. "Cost structure and technological change of local public transport: the Kaohsiung City Bus case," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(12), pages 1399-1410.

    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. Harry Bloch & Gary Madden & Grant Coble‐Neal & Scott J. Savage, 2001. "The Cost Structure of Australian Telecommunications," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 77(239), pages 338-350, December.
    2. Harry Bloch & Gary Madden & Scott Savage, 2001. "Economies of Scale and Scope in Australian Telecommunications," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 18(2), pages 219-227, March.
    3. Nick Wills‐Johnson, 2008. "Separability and Subadditivity in Australian Railways," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 84(264), pages 95-108, March.
    4. Charles R. Hulten, 2000. "Total Factor Productivity: A Short Biography," NBER Working Papers 7471, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Plutarchos Sakellaris & Daniel J. Wilson, 2004. "Quantifying Embodied Technological Change," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 7(1), pages 1-26, January.
    6. Lucinda, Claudio Ribeiro & Anuatti, Francisco, 2017. "Economies of Scale and Scope in the Sanitation Sector," Brazilian Review of Econometrics, Sociedade Brasileira de Econometria - SBE, vol. 37(2), November.
    7. Voon, Jan P. & Chen, Edward K. Y., 2003. "Contributions of capital stock quality improvement to economic growth: the case of Hong Kong," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(4), pages 631-644, August.
    8. Hsieh, Chang-Tai, 2001. "Endogenous growth and obsolescence," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 153-171, October.
    9. Maher, Maria E., 1999. "Access costs and entry in the local telecommunications network: a case for de-averaged rates," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 593-609, May.
    10. Elisabetta Ottoz & Marina Di Giacomo, 2012. "Diversification strategies and scope economies: evidence from a sample of Italian regional bus transport providers," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(22), pages 2867-2880, August.
    11. Resende, Marcelo, 1999. "Productivity growth and regulation in U.S. local telephony," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 23-44, March.
    12. Hulten, Charles R., 2010. "Growth Accounting," Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, in: Bronwyn H. Hall & Nathan Rosenberg (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 987-1031, Elsevier.
    13. Victor Glass & Stela Stefanova, 2012. "Economies of scale for broadband in rural United States," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 41(1), pages 100-119, February.
    14. Segendorff, Björn, 1995. "The Telecommunication Market: A Survey of Theory and Empirics," Working Paper Series 442, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    15. Voon, Jan P., 2001. "Measuring social returns to higher education investments in Hong Kong: production function approach," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 20(5), pages 503-510, October.
    16. Michael J. Harper, 2007. "Technology and the Theory of Vintage Aggregation," NBER Chapters, in: Hard-to-Measure Goods and Services: Essays in Honor of Zvi Griliches, pages 99-120, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Frank R. Lichtenberg & Suchin Virabhak, 2007. "Pharmaceutical-embodied technical progress, longevity, and quality of life: drugs as 'Equipment for Your Health'," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(4-5), pages 371-392.
    18. Gort, Michael & Wall, Richard A., 1998. "Obsolescence, input augmentation, and growth accounting," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(9), pages 1653-1665, November.
    19. Das, Nibedita, 2000. "Technology, efficiency and sustainability of competition in the Indian telecommunications sector," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 12(2), pages 133-154, June.
    20. Plutarchos Sakellaris & Dan Wilson, 2000. "The Production-Side Approach to Estimating Embodied Technological Change," Electronic Working Papers 00-002, University of Maryland, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • L96 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Telecommunications

    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:pra:mprapa:10683. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.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.