Marginal cost estimation and fixed costs

[jbs02002]

Does anyone know of any papers that discuss estimation of marginal costs? In particular, I need some justification for the idea that when estimating cost as a function of sales, it is good practice to include an intercept term which represents fixed costs. Omission of the intercept would lead to inaccurate estimates of marginal cost.

[Aeshma]

read

Ackerberg, D., Benkard, L., Berry, S., and Pakes, A. (2006) "Econometric Tools for Analyzing

Market Outcomes", Forthcoming, Handbook of Econometrics

Ackerberg, D., K. Caves and G. Fraser (2004), ”Structural Identification of Production

Functions,” mimeo, UCLA.

for an introduction into production function estimation