Theory Of Production And Cost

Production theory and the theory of cost both belong to the central areas of business administration, for all considerations concerning the economic organization of industrial manufacturing processes start from these. Two developments in the past 30 years have had a considerable influence on the structure and the concentration on points of emphasis in this book. I am referring to findings from KOOPMANS' activity analysis and to the formulation by GUTENBERG of a production function concept that focuses on industrial production processes. Activity analysis has made it possible to develop, from a uniform approach, different types of production functions which describe the concrete principles of production in the productive sector of a business enterprise; this has created a common basis for all production concepts in business administration. The Gutenberg Production Function with its different kinds of adjustment to a changing output has opened up a flexibility to theoretical and practical considerations that gave rise to a large number of additional studies in this area. Considerations in cost theory were in particular need of considerable extensions in the direction of cost minimal combined adjustment processes. By means of the organization of its contents, this book will take both approaches into due account. In that way, it is vastly different from other books dealing with the same subject. As a matter of course, traditional analytical methods and ways of thinking also constitute a large part of the book.

A sequel to his frequently cited Cost and Production Functions (1953), this book offers a unified, comprehensive treatment of these functions which underlie the economic theory of production. The approach is axiomatic for a definition of technology, by mappings of input vectors into subsets of output vectors that represent the unconstrained technical possibilities of production. To provide a completely general means of characterizing a technology, an alternative to the production function, called the Distance Function, is introduced. The duality between cost function and production function is developed by introducing a cost correspondence, showing that these two functions are given in terms of each other by dual minimum problems. The special class of production structures called Homothetic is given more general definition and extended to technologies with multiple outputs. Originally published in 1971. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This study is the result of an interest in the economic theory of production intermittently pursued during the past three years. Over this period I have received substantial support from the Office of Naval Research, first from a personal service consulting contract directly with the Mathematics Division of the Office of Naval Research and secondly from Project N6 onr-27009 at Princeton Univer sity under the direction of Professor Oskar Morgenstern. Grateful acknowledgement is made to the ·Office of Naval Research for this support and to Professor Morgenstern, in particular, for his interest in the puolication of this research. The responsibility for errors and omissions, how ever, rests entirely upon the author. Professor G. C. Evans has given in terms of a simple total cost function, depending solely upon output rate, a treatment of certain aspects of the economic theory of production which has inherent generality and convenience of formulation. The classical approach of expressing the technology of production by means of a production function is potentially less restrictive than the use of a simple total cost function, but it has not been applied in a more general form other than to derive the familiar conditions between marginal productivities of the factors of produc tion and their market prices.

This graduate text develops production theory from a set of reasonable axioms. The theory is presented both in a primal and dual as well as in an indirect (constrained) framework. The basic model leads to a set of efficiency measures which can be readily employed in empirical work. A first draft of the text was used to teach students at Vanderbilt University. The text includes a variety of exercise problems.

Heinrich von Stackelberg's book, "Grundlagen einer reinen Kostentheorie", published in 1932 was at the forefront of a growing conceptual revolution in the theory of the firm, a theory which appears more relevant than ever in today’s economic climate. In this work, Stackelberg masterfully built a theoretical framework which he later developed in Market Structure and Equilibrium. Foundations of a Pure Cost Theory represents the first translation of the original German version into English. This substantial book offers readers a critical and technical understanding of the firm, how firms function and the environments in which they operate. Fundamental notions of cost production, market economy, optimum position and velocities of production are given prominence. Ultimately, this work, which remains largely unknown, can be seen as a milestone text in our understanding of the strategies adopted by firms as a whole. The book has been meticulously translated from the German into English, retaining the author’s examples in their historical context and capturing the spirit of the time with all its subtlety and significance.

A sequel to his frequently cited Cost and Production Functions (1953), this book offers a unified, comprehensive treatment of these functions which underlie the economic theory of production. The approach is axiomatic for a definition of technology, by mappings of input vectors into subsets of output vectors that represent the unconstrained technical possibilities of production. To provide a completely general means of characterizing a technology, an alternative to the production function, called the Distance Function, is introduced. The duality between cost function and production function is developed by introducing a cost correspondence, showing that these two functions are given in terms of each other by dual minimum problems. The special class of production structures called Homothetic is given more general definition and extended to technologies with multiple outputs. Originally published in 1971. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This book covers the basic theory of how, what and when firms should produce to maximise profits. Based on the neoclassical theory of the firm presented in most general microeconomic textbooks, it extends the general treatment and focuses on the application of the theory to specific problems that the firm faces when making production decisions to maximise profits. Increasing level of government regulation and the use of specialised and often very expensive equipment in modern production motivates the following focus areas: 1) How to optimise production under restrictions., 2) Treatment of fixed inputs and the process of input fixation, 3) Optimisation of production over time, 4) Linear and Mixed Integer Programming as tools for optimisation in practice. This updated second edition includes a more comprehensive introduction to the theory of decision making under risk and uncertainty as well as a new chapter on how to use linear programming to generate the supply function of the firm.

The object of this book is to present a complete, systematic and thorough exposition of the neoclassical theory of production and distribution. Despite this basic objective, each chapter presents extensions of neoclassical theory and interpretations of established relations. The book has two distinct parts. In Part I the microeconomic theories of production, cost and derived input demand are explored in depth for both fixed-proportions and variable-proportions production functions. Special emphasis is placed upon the characteristics and implications of production functions homogeneous of degree one. Part II is devoted chiefly to the neoclassical theory of aggregate relative factor shares, the elasticity of substitution, and technological progress.

This book looks at the value and distribution debates on the theories of Adam Smith. A variety of the aspects of his work are covered in this book such as his labour command measure, as are a number of interpretations and criticisms.