Profit function approximations and duality applications to agriculture

Monte Carlo simulations of profit functions indicate that flexible functional forms may be ranked nearly the same with respect to Allen-Uzawa partial substitution elasticities or price and fixed factor elasticities. Flexible functional form approximations of output price elasticities are generally worse than approximations of input price or fixed factor elasticities. Minflex Laurent functional forms did not appear to approximate underlying elasticities any better than did their translog and generalized Leontief counterparts.