Productivity trends in U.S. manufacturing: Evidence from the NQ and AIM cost functions

In this paper, we take the econometric approach to productivity measurement in United States manufacturing, using KLEM data over the period from 1953 to 2001. We are also interested in technical change bias, price elasticities, and elasticities of substitution in the U.S. manufacturing industry. We present an empirical comparison and evaluation of the effectiveness of four well-known flexible cost functions—the locally flexible generalized Leontief (see Diewert [1971. An application of the Shephard duality theorem: a generalized Leontief production function. Journal of Political Economy 79, 481–507]), translog (see Christensen et al. [1975. Transendendal logarithmic utility functions. American Economic Review 65, 367–364]), and normalized quadratic (see Diewert and Wales [1987. Flexible functional forms and global curvature conditions. Econometrica 55, 43–68])—and the globally flexible asymptotically ideal model (see Barnett et al. [1991. Semi-nonparametric Bayesian estimation of the asymptotically ideal production model. Journal of Econometrics 49, 5–50]), the latter modified to introduce technical change by means of Thomsenʹs [2000. Short cuts to dynamic factor demand modelling. Journal of Econometrics 97, 1–23] factor-augmenting efficiency index approach.