The Cobb-Douglas production function revisited

2019/10/11 by Roman G. Smirnov, Smirnov, Roman G., Kunpeng Wang +1 · 3 citations
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · #53Dxx #91Bxx #Economic Growth and Productivity #Economic theories and models #FOS: Economics and business #FOS: Mathematics #General Economics (econ.GN) #Symplectic Geometry (math.SG)

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1910.06739

openalex publication_date 2019/10/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

Charles Cobb and Paul Douglas in 1928 used data from the US manufacturing sector for 1899-1922 to introduce what is known today as the Cobb-Douglas production function that has been widely used in economic theory for decades. We employ the R programming language to fit the formulas for the parameters of the Cobb-Douglas production function generated by the authors recently via the bi-Hamiltonian approach to the same data set utilized by Cobb and Douglas. We conclude that the formulas for the output elasticities and total factor productivity are compatible with the original 1928 data.

Cited by

• Rethinking Growth: An Extension of the Solow-Swan Model
• Deriving Production Functions in Economics Through Data-Driven Dynamical Systems
• Caputo-Type Memory Invariants: A Fractional Generalization of the Cobb-Douglas Production Function

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