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In other words, returns to scale analysis is a long-term theory because a company can only change the scale of production in the long run by changing factors of production, such as building new facilities, investing in new machinery, or improving technology.
Returns to scale can be Increasing returns to scale: doubling all input usages more than doubles output. Decreasing returns to scale: doubling all input usages less than doubles output. Constant returns to scale: doubling all input usages exactly doubles output.
Economies of scale is related to and can easily be confused with the theoretical economic notion of returns to scale. Where economies of scale refer to a firm's costs, returns to scale describe the relationship between inputs and outputs in a long-run (all inputs variable) production function.
New trade theorists relaxed the assumption of constant returns to scale, and showed that increasing returns can drive trade flows between similar countries, without differences in productivity or factor endowments. With increasing returns to scale, countries that are identical still have an incentive to trade with each other.
The presence of increasing returns means that a one percent increase in the usage levels of all inputs would result in a greater than one percent increase in output; the presence of decreasing returns means that it would result in a less than one percent increase in output. Constant returns to scale is the in-between case.
Where = 1 (Constant return to scale), < 1 (Decreasing return to scale), > 1 (Increasing return to scale). As its name suggests, the CES production function exhibits constant elasticity of substitution between capital and labor.
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If the coefficient is 1, then production is experiencing constant returns to scale. Note that returns to scale may change as the level of production changes. [2] A different usage of the term "output elasticity" is defined as the percentage change in output per one percent change in all the inputs. [3] The coefficient of output elasticity can ...