Many - not all - of my recent numerical examples have a certain abstract pattern:
- At the start of the time under consideration, one technique is uniquely cost minimizing, for all feasible rates of profits.
- Coefficients of production decline or some markups over the normal rate of profits vary.
- A fluke switch point appears.
- Switch points move along the wage frontier, and interesting phenomena occur. These can be other fluke switch points. Reswitching, the recurrence of techniques, capital-reversing, the reverse substitution of labor, or process recurrence might arise for some time.
- Eventually, these interesting phenomena disappear, and another technique is uniquely cost minimizing, for all feasible rates of profits.
I have not been looking at random technology. The occurrence of a fluke switch point is not surprising in my examples. Neither is some of the phenomena mentioned in (4). I have been deliberately creating examples to highlight some of these possibilities. But I have often found a second or more fluke switch points arising that I did not expect. I have also created examples in which one technique gets replaced with another, but in which reswitching, etc. do not occur.
My program remains unfinished. In these posts and papers, I have suggested the possibilities of some proofs and additional fluke switch points. I have yet to even begin considering how the changes in the wage frontier I have been investigating might manifest themselves in the movement of market prices. I could do more with markups varying among industry. I have yet to provide examples with land and fixed capital, where the wage frontier is not the appropriate tool for analyzing the choice of technique.
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