Assessing the effects of measurement errors on the estimation of production functions
利用企业层面价格数据，比较了使用企业特定价格与行业统一定价指数计算产出和中间投入时，生产函数参数估计的差异，发现统一定价指数会导致规模估计偏低，主要源于劳动系数向下偏误。
Abstract This article explores to what extent the poor results that are often found when estimating parameters of production functions can be attributed to measurement errors, due to the use of common price deflators across firms. Because of the lack of detailed micro‐economic data, econometricians have to rely on industry‐wide deflators when computing outputs and intermediate inputs. A unique feature of the longitudinal data used in this paper is that it reports firm‐level prices. This allows for a comparative assessment of production function parameters where the outputs and intermediate inputs are computed using both firm‐specific prices and industry‐wide deflators. The empirical results presented in this paper show that the use of common deflators across firms leads to lower scale estimates, mainly because of a large downward bias in the estimated coefficients for labour. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.