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Lumifer comments on How much does consumption affect production? - LessWrong
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Heh. It seems we have pronounced... methodological differences :-D
Empirically, some industries are approximately constant-cost, others are increasing- and decreasing-cost. OP mentioned certain factors pushing one way or the other, but ultimately the slope of the long-run supply curve of an industry is determined by which factors predominate, so we'd have to measure it to be sure. What is generally true, however, is that long-run supply is typically highly elastic, so cost doesn't change much from marginal changes in demand.
Empirical evidence is nice and often more convincing than theory, but I don't think it's necessary for an argument to be convincing (to believe otherwise would be quite... burdensome).
In this case, the original articles I am critiquing used purely theoretical arguments to claim that there will be long term price elasticity of supply, and I think that a theoretical critique is sufficient to show that the strength of their arguments is currently too weak to support the complexity of their theory.
I'm certainly open to any empirical evidence that may exist. Would you find a quick analysis of Big Macs moving (or if not, do you have a suggestion for a different empirical analysis)?
The first question is whether you're interested in being convincing or in getting an accurate map.
Economics, in particular, is well-known for its fondness for theoretical arguments which tend not to hold up in real life.
You'll have to specify what you are looking for. In particular, how long is "long term"? What kind of goods or industries you want to include and exclude?
For example, it wouldn't be hard to find both price and supply (=production) data for major commodities (oil, copper, wheat, etc.). You could plot a scatter graph, attempt to fit a model....