Does the aggregate production function imply anything about the laws of production? A comment

Abstract

This paper discusses McCombie's (1987) empirical evidence on the Simon–Shaikh critique. It is argued that while the theoretical argument is correct, the evidence presented depends on the adjustment of the stock of capital for capacity utilization. Probably factor shares are not sufficiently constant in this data set for the Cobb–Douglas form to provide a good approximation to the accounting identity.