A rationale for the allocation of U.S. Navy ship repair work

The dissertation begins with a statement of the problem faced by defense planners in determining how best to distribute Navy ship-repair work between private and naval shipyards. The history and organization of the industry are described to establish the differences between the naval and private sectors that are important to the economic and empirical analyses by which they are compared. Property rights in the firm are explored to identify the differences in ownership, use of labor and capital, constraints, and incentives that explain and predict the behavior of the naval and private sectors of the ship-repair industry. The political, economic and structural forces that constrain the Navy ship-repair allocation process are identified. An empirical analysis determines that the Cobb-Douglas form is the most appropriate production function with which to estimate econometric parameters of industry performance. A Cobb-Douglas form of a production function is estimated using available data from both the naval and private sectors. Results obtained indicate that in a comparison of aggregate industry data, the naval sector exhibits slightly larger output elasticities for labor and capital. The comparison of single private and single naval shipyards did not prove to be significant at the...