Factor Intensity and Site Geology as Determinants of Returns to Scale in Coal Mining

dc.contributor.author	Boyd, Gale	en_US
dc.date.accessioned	2010-03-09T15:47:46Z
dc.date.available	2010-03-09T15:47:46Z
dc.date.issued	1987	en_US
dc.identifier.citation	Boyd, Gale. Factor Intensity and Site Geology as Determinants of Returns to Scale in Coal Mining. The Review of Economics and Statistics. 69.1 (1987): 18-23. Print
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10161/2125
dc.description.abstract	Increasing returns to scale (RTS) is frequently postulated as affecting productivity in surface coal mining. However, it is not clear whether increased capital intensity or increased output is the relevant phenomenon. A ray-homothetic production function that incorporates the capital-labor mix and fixed site geology into the scale elasticity is presented and estimated with a micro (mine level) dataset. The results indicate that higher capital intensity contributes to higher RTS for some types of capital equipment, but not all. On the average increasing RTS was found, with few mines approaching optimal scale.	en_US
dc.format.extent	1077359 bytes
dc.format.mimetype	application/pdf
dc.language.iso	en_US
dc.publisher	MIT Press Journals
dc.source.uri	http://www.jstor.org/stable/1937896
dc.subject	capital intensity	en_US
dc.subject	increasing retuns to scale	en_US
dc.title	Factor Intensity and Site Geology as Determinants of Returns to Scale in Coal Mining	en_US
dc.type	Journal Article	en_US
dc.department	Economics
dc.relation.journal	The Review of Economics and Statistics