The demand for energy in Canadian manufacturing: An example of the estimation of production structures with many inputs

A model is presented for the estimation of production structures with many inputs when aggregation into a small number of aggregate inputs is undesirable. The procedure utilized is one of two-stage optimization, valid under the assumption of homothetic separability. A unique feature is the use of duality theory to integrate the two stages through the generation in the first stage of an instrumental variable for the aggregate price index of the separable disaggregated factors. The conceptual model is then applied to an analysis of the demand for energy in Canadian manufacturing, in which six energy components are explicitly included in the set of factors of production.