Talk:Constant elasticity of substitution

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Deriving s from the formula of r should lead to s = 1/(1+r) --Selach (talk) 09:53, 16 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This article explains nothing and uses its own term to describe what the term means. The article needs to be rewritten. —Preceding unsigned comment added by BetsyWalls (talkcontribs) 03:28, 13 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Missing 'F' term in CES equation[edit]

I think the equation after "The general form of the CES production function is:" should have an 'F' (factor productivity) before the 'Sum' symbol.

--Billtubbs (talk) 05:23, 7 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Adding utility[edit]

Really CES is a type of function. So it could be a utility function or a production function. This is a significant limitaton of the article. Hawk8103 (talk) 14:32, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Attribution Error[edit]

There is an attribution error here. This function is orginally due to Solow. For some reason few economists, Uzawa (1962) being a notable exception, seem aware that Solow introduced this function in 1956. It was later, in 1961, that Arrow, Chenery, Minhas and Solow showed this was the only possible form for a two-factor function exhibiting constant elasticity of substitution (makng Cobb-Douglas a special case of this function). This function should really be called the Solow function, or, my preference, CES (Solow) function. (I am not Solow, by the way.) I believe this attribution error should be corrected in the article. <Solow, R., 1956. A contribution to the theory of economic growth. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 70, 65–94.>; <Uzawa, H., 1962. Production functions with constant elasticities of substitution. Review of Economic Studies 9 (4), 291–299 (No. 81).> A common man (talk) 16:57, 3 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Dr. Bertoletti's comment on this article[edit]

Dr. Bertoletti has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:


1) the reference to the problems which arise with more than 2 factors and to the work by Uzawa is unaccurate and basically wrong (the statement: "the use of the CES form for more than 2 factors will generally mean that there is not constant elasticity of substitution among all factors" is meaningless) 2) the reference to "isoelastic utility" is obscure to me


We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

Dr. Bertoletti has published scholarly research which seems to be relevant to this Wikipedia article:


  • Reference 1: Paolo Bertoletti & Federico Etro, 2013. "Monopolistic Competition: A Dual Approach," DEM Working Papers Series 043, University of Pavia, Department of Economics and Management.
  • Reference 2: Paolo Bertoletti & Paolo Epifani, 2012. "Monopolistic Competition: CES Redux?," DEM Working Papers Series 004, University of Pavia, Department of Economics and Management.

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 18:55, 27 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The thing I've noticed, is that equation does not include the degree of homogenity (it sets it to 1, in effect). This makes it homeothetic, but the definition of the two-factor case does not imply this property, and I don't see any way that it is implied in the multi-factor case.--Ipatrol (talk)

Dr. Saltari's comment on this article[edit]

Dr. Saltari has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:


My only suggestion is to insert a section on the empirical estimate of the elasticity of substitution


We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

We believe Dr. Saltari has expertise on the topic of this article, since he has published relevant scholarly research:


  • Reference 1: Daniela Federici & Enrico Saltari, 2014. "Elasticity of substitution and the slowdown of Italian productivity," Working Papers 166, University of Rome La Sapienza, Department of Public Economics.
  • Reference 2: Saltari, Enrico & Federici, Daniela, 2013. "Elasticity of substitution and technical progress: Is there a misspecification problem?," MPRA Paper 52194, University Library of Munich, Germany.

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 19:12, 26 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]