Productivity growth and competitiveness of the United States petroleum-refining industry
The specific objectives of the study are threefold: is to analyze the production structure of the U.S. Petroleum Refining Industry; to measure and analyze inputs productivity growth as well as total factor productivity growth; and to study the impact of total factor productivity as proxy for technology on exports and imports of the U.S. Petroleum Refining Industry. The time period chosen for this study is 1958-1986. The analysis of the production structure of the industry is based on the translog multiproduct cost function. Using this function, 24 different models with different specification were estimated. These models investigated the following: (i) the treatment of technical change; (ii) the construction of service price of capital; (iii) the impact of scale characteristics; (iv) the treatments of input aggregation; (v) and the nature of factor adjustment. The selected model has the following specifications: full equilibrium, nonhomotheticity, nonneutral technical change, and capital gain is excluded from the service price of capital. The results of the analysis suggest some interesting conclusions: the industry operated at increasing return to scale; the technical change is labor and capital saving and material using; capital is substitute for material, production labor, and nonproduction labor; the relation between labor and material changed from substitute to complements; the relation between the two labor also changed from substitute to complement; total factor productivity growth contributed about 47% of output growth; total factor productivity underestimated technical change on the average; non-marginal pricing has negative effects on the growth of total factor productivity; total factor productivity growth enhanced the industry international competitiveness in gasoline domestic market and jet and distillate fuel oil world market.
- Research Organization:
- Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst., Troy, NY (USA)
- OSTI ID:
- 5886996
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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CAPITAL
COMPETITION
DISTILLATES
ECONOMIC ANALYSIS
ECONOMIC GROWTH
ECONOMIC POLICY
ECONOMICS
ENERGY POLICY
ENERGY SOURCES
EXPORTS
FOSSIL FUELS
FUELS
GASOLINE
GOVERNMENT POLICIES
IMPORTS
INDUSTRIAL PLANTS
INDUSTRY
JET ENGINE FUELS
LABOR
LIQUID FUELS
MARKET
MATERIALS
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
PETROLEUM
PETROLEUM DISTILLATES
PETROLEUM FRACTIONS
PETROLEUM INDUSTRY
PETROLEUM PRODUCTS
PETROLEUM REFINERIES
PRICES
PRODUCTIVITY
TECHNOLOGY IMPACTS