Costs and Outputs

Armen Albert Alchian

Expert InsightsPublished 1958

Propositions designed to eliminate some of the ambiguities and errors involved in the relationships between cost and output both in the long and short run. The suggested propositions are shown to be empirically valid in distinguishing between rate and quantity of output, the changes in technology as distinct from changes in technique, the use of calendar-time dates of output instead of technical fixity for distinguishing output operations, and the use of capital-value concepts instead of rates of costs. (Published in Baran, Scitovsky, and Shaw (eds.), [The] [Allocation of Resources], Stanford University Press, 1959.) (See also P-2448.)

Document Details

  • Copyright: RAND Corporation
  • Availability: Web Only
  • Year: 1958
  • Pages: 28
  • Document Number: P-1449

Citation

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Alchian, Armen Albert, Costs and Outputs. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1958. https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P1449.html.
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