The authors measure the economies of scale of Canada's six largest banks and their costefficiency over time. Using a unique panel data set from 1983 to 2003, they estimate pooled translog cost functions and derive measures of relative efficiency and economies of scale.
Using French data on industrial firms over the period 1989-2001, the authors estimate a "flexible" Translog production function that accounts for the volumes and durations of factor utilization.
Although a number of studies have demonstrated the importance of the degree of factor utilization in economic analysis, the impact of the durations of utilization in a production function remains largely unknown, particularly in terms of the duration of equipment utilization.
In this paper, we use firm-level wage and employment data to address whether there is evidence of downward nominal-wage rigidity, and whether that rigidity is associated with a reduction in employment. We describe an estimation bias that can result when estimating reduced-form wage and employment equations and suggest a way of controlling for that bias. […]