INDUSTRIAL CAPACITY UTILIZATION IN COLOMBIA SORZ EMPIRICAL FINDINGS.pdf英文资料.pdfVIP

INDUSTRIAL CAPACITY UTILIZATION IN COLOMBIA: SORZ EMPIRICAL FINDINGS by Francisco E. Thoumi Discussion Paper No. 14, April 1972 University of Minnesota and Departamento Nacional de Planeacicn de Colombia Center for Economic Research Department of Economics University of Minnesota Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455 INDUSTRIAL CAPACITY UTILIZATION IN COLOMBIA: SOME EMPIRICAL FINDINGS by Francisco E. Thoumi * The Issue of Industrial Capacity Utilization I. It has traditionally been considered that the main problem of developing countries is to accumulate capital. As a result of this approach to develop­ ment, factcrs constraining the accumulation of capital have been subject to a careful scrutiny by the economics profession. Since savings are needed to finance investment and since most capital goods are usually imported in less developed countries (LDCs), the two main constraints of development usually studied are savings and foreign exchange. However, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the use of capital equipment that is so difficult to accumulate. In particular, there has not been much work done in LDCs on the problems of measuring capital utilization, of finding out what factors affect such utilization and of deter­ mining what is the optimum use of capital both in terms of the amount of variable factors applied to a fixed amount of capital at an instant of time and in terms of the percentage of time that fixed capital should be used. Most references to capacity utilization in LD(s question the optimality