On the effectiveness of private and public capital

This study assesses the effectiveness of private and public capital investments in the performance of manufactures within the framework of the duality theory. The response of costs of production and input utilization to changes in the stocks of private and public capital is measured by the appropriate elasticities obtained from a cost function. Instead of considering private capital either as a variable or fixed input on a priori grounds, its nature is checked, that is, the study discriminates between a long- and a short-run situation. The empirical exercise is made for the manufacturing industries in the Spanish regions.