View Item 

Australian Coal Mining: Estimating technical change and resource exhaustion in a translog cost function

Access Status
Open access
Authors
Azzalini, Paul
Bloch, Harry
Haslehurst, Paula
Date
2004
Type
Working Paper

Metadata
Show full item record
Citation
Azzalini, Paul and Bloch, Harry and Haslehurst, Paula (2004) Australian Coal Mining: Estimating technical change and resource exhaustion in a translog cost function, School of Economics and Finance Working Paper Series: no. 04:07, Curtin University of Technology, School of Economics and Finance.
Faculty
Curtin Business School
School of Economics and Finance
URI
Collection
Abstract

This paper estimates a translog cost function for the Australian coal industry from 1968 to 2001. We use a variable measuring the shift to open-pit mining to capture the impact of technical change, while using a time trend to capture the impact of resource exhaustion. The cost function is estimated with the Zellner's SUR procedure. Technical change is significant in lowering cost, but over time this cost reduction has been largely offset by the impact of resource exhaustion.