Karakteristik teknologi dalam perusahaan dan industri semen di Indonesia

• Main Author: KINDANGEN, Paulus
• Format: Theses and Dissertations NonPeerReviewed
• Published: Universitas Gadjah Mada 2001
• Subjects: Other Technology; Economics
• Online Access: https://repository.ugm.ac.id/171820/; http://etd.repository.ugm.ac.id/index.php?mod=penelitian_detail&sub=PenelitianDetail&act=view&typ=html&buku_id=101
• Institution: Universitas Gadjah Mada

The general objective of this research is to find the link between the use of technology and efficiency in cement firms and industry in Indonesia.Specifically, there are four objectives of this research. Firstly, to find out the effect of energy price on production and operations costs in cement firms and / or industry in Indonesia. Secondly, analyze the technological change that implies the rate of cost reduction or efficiency increase over time, ceteris paribus, as a result of technology application in cement firms and industry. Thirdly, analyze the use of scale economies to get the fact on efficiency of cement firms and industry as well as the opportunity of cost reduction or efficiency increase. Finally, analyze the nature of relationship between two inputs - substitution or complementary - i n order to know the possibility to change input combination when input prices change. This study was conducted using translog cost function approach. The main data - cost, output, price of labor, price of energy, and price of capital - were obtained by processing the raw data of BPS industry survey, period 1987-1997. Time index was used as a proxy of technology. The estimate of cost function was conducted simultaneously with input cost share funstions (labor, energy, capital). From the cost function, the technology characteristics of technological progress, scale economies, and input substitution were derived. The result shows that the price of energy influence negatively on cost or influence positively on efficiency. The reason is that the increase in oil price encourages cement firms and industry to increase the efficiency of energy use or to conserve energy. Furthermore, technological change or cost reduction occured over time in cement firms and industry, but the change is small. The average number of technological change at industry level is 0.1274. The technological change is found to be biased toward toward labor and energy saving as well as capital using. Bias toward capital using and labor saving strengthens the fact that cement industry is capital intensive and that technological change shifts or moves out labor from cement industry. Bias toward energy saving supports the result that the price of energy negatively influence the cost. Production at scale economies is shown to exist in five large firms with total production share embraces more than % of that of industry. The use of scale economies is still low, that is less than 60 percent or still far below the efficient scale (constant returns to scale). In other words, cement firms and industry are not efficient yet in terms of the use of scale economies. The relationships between two inputs are found to be substitute as shown by the positive elasticity of substitution between labor and capital, labor and energy, and between anergy and capital. The result implies a chance to select input combination in order to minimize cost, especially when there is a change in relative price of inputs. The general conclusion is that cement firms and industry have adopted technolgy, but they have not been able to increase efficiency substantially. The main factor could be the low production in their available scale economies.