Primary Metal Industries Research Articles

Innovation and the Future of the American Primary Metals Industry

Innovation and the Future of the American Primary Metals Industry

An Energy Demand and Generalized Fuel Choice Model for the Primary Metals Industry

The energy demand and generalized fuel-choice model developed for the primary metals industry shows that, in the long run, the aggregate demand for energy is unitary elastic with respect to own price, yet overall energy demand may increase because of non-price determinants such as natural gas curtailments. Significant third-price effects influence the share, aggregate demand, and conventional price elasticities, but a structural change that occurred between the pre- and post-embargo periods modified these interfuel relationships. Forecast of energy demand to the year 2000 indicate an overall increase in energy efficiency. Putting a tax on a fuel such as natural gas would further decrease energy use, but would increase use of fuel oil. 11 references, 9 tables.

Commercial Banks, Interlocking Directorates and Economic Power: An Analysis of the Primary Metals Industry

This paper addresses the issues of corporate control and bank power by analyzing relations between commercial banks and firms in the primary metals industry. We construct three models of corporate control: management control, single bank control, and collective bank control. We test the validity of these models for the primary metals industry by comparing (1) frequencies and distributions of bank-corporate interlocks and bank-trust department stockholdings; and (2) relationships between bank interlocks and measures of relative short-term debt and dividend payout rate. Our results support none of the models fully but lend partial support to the collective bank-control model. Two additional approaches to the study of economic powerthe resource dependence perspective and the class cohesion perspective-are then discussed and suggestions made for further research. Corporations, and the managers and stockholders that govern them, have enormous power in our society (Bell, 1973); yet our knowledge of how corporations function, and of how they cooperate and compete, is severely limited (Useem, 1979, 1980). The ability of commercial banks and bankers to influence non-financial corporations is one important area that requires more research. This paper constructs and evaluates different models of economic power, with special emphasis on the influence they attribute to banks. To this end, we examine the frequency with which firms in an important U.S. industry (primary metals) maintain interlocking directorates

Commercial Banks, Interlocking Directorates and Economic Power: An Analysis of the Primary Metals Industry

Commercial Banks, Interlocking Directorates and Economic Power: An Analysis of the Primary Metals Industry

Occupational Exposure and Cancer of the Liver

The relation between occupational exposure and cancer of the liver was investigated. Excess risk was determined for men working in the nonelectrical machinery and primary metal industries.

Technical change in the U.S. primary metals industry

A dual cost function embodying biased technical change is estimated for the postwar primary metals industry. The identifying restriction of constant rates of factor augmentation is used to derive significant estimates of rates of biased technical change which are consistent with the induced innovation hypothesis. Also, the bias in elasticity estimates which results from ignoring biased technical change is shown to be serious.

Interfuel substitution in the primary metals industries

This paper applies a translog price possibility frontier to a pooled sample in order to measure the extent of interfuel substitution effects in the primary metals industries. The results clearly indicate that relative changes in fuel prices across primary metals industries have significant effects on energy consumption. This, in turn, has important implications for public policy. In particular, the market system appears better able to deal with exogenous shifts in energy supplies than has frequently been assumed in the formulation of public policies toward the energy crisis.

FACTUAL INPUTS FOR ALLOCATION DECISIONS CONCERNING SCARCE WATER RESOURCES1

ABSTRACT: Factual inputs which may be useful for completing first‐order assessments to aid decision‐making on the allocation of scarce water resources are compiled. Water needs of major manufacturing industry groups and of minerals industries show wide variations in several measures of water use intensity. The chemicals and allied products and primary metals industries dominate the total water intake and consumptive water use by manufacturing industries. Consumptive use per employee for the petroleum and coal products industry group is nearly 2.5 times higher than that for any other industry group. Estimates of the water requirements per unit energy output for energy‐processing systems vary by as much as an order of magnitude. Agricultural water use is larger than that of any other industry but water use for irrigation is not expected to increase significantly by the year 2020. In California, the production of crop calories and proteins per unit of irrigation water applied may vary by more than an order of magnitude. Crops which offer larger monetary returns per acre are irrigated most frequently.

Citizen complaints of air pollution in Northeastern Illinois.

In 1964, as part of the Northeastern Illinois Metropolitan Planning Commission's Air Resource Management Study, an examination was made of citizen complaints of air pollution registered with air pollution control agencies representing the City of Chicago, outlying Cook County, and the State of Illinois. The complaint files of the City of Chicago were found to contain the addresses of some 9500 air pollution sources specified by complainants in complaints covering the time period from approximately 1954 to 1964. A statistical sample of these sources showed more than 70% to be of a nonindustrial nature, with domestic fuel burning or incineration by neighbors most often specified. There were 1119 industrial process source snamed in the Chicago files; 588 nonmanufacturing and 531 manufacturing. Fabricated metal industries, primary metal industries, chemical manufacturers, and food processing plants were cited more often than other industrial categories. Complaint sources named in complaints filed by citizens with the State of Illinois, and with Cook County, differed with those of Chicago in that industrial sources were specified more often than nonindustrial ones. The reason for this is believed to lie in the reduced residential densities and the relatively great use of pollution-free fuels in the metropolitan area outside of the City of Chicago.

A Measure of the Change in Relative Exploitation of Capital and Labor

BY exploitation, we mean that a factor of production is receiving less than its marginal revenue product. Relative exploitation connotes that the marginal rate of technical substitution of two factors is not equal to the ratio of their scarcity prices. Hence, either both factors may be exploited, but in different degrees, or one factor may be exploited while the other is not. In the present paper, a measure of the change in relative exploitation of capital and labor is presented together with empirical results for three two-digit industries (machinery except electric, primary metal industries, and electric and gas utilities), where the observations are drawn from the period, 1948-1960. Knowledge of variations in relative exploitation is useful in quantifying and explaining the sources of change in the distribution of income between the factors of production. This, in itself, is sufficient justification for focusing on the change in relative exploitation rather than the level. Although there may be more intrinsic interest in a measure of the level of exploitation as defined above, the framework used below does not lend itself to such a measure. The paper is laid out in the following manner. An elementary model of exploitation within a constant elasticity of substitution (CES) framework is presented first. This is followed by an econometric specification of one of the equations which must be tested in order to derive the required measure, while the succeeding section is devoted to the direct estimation method of the second required equation, the CES production function. Next, the empirical results for three selected industries are presented and discussed. The subsequent section contains the quantification of the changes in relative exploitation. In a later section, some problems with the framework and measuring procedures are discussed.