How to translate the term "capacity expansion models" (economics) to Spanish?

Question

How to translate the term "capacity expansion models" (economics) to Spanish?

The translation seems to be "modelos de expansión de capacidad" but it does not make sense in the context.

I'm reading an article about mathematical models formulations.

The sentence is as follows:

The first model assumes a perfect, competitive equilibrium. It is very similar to the traditional "capacity expansion models" even if its economic interpretation is different. The second model (open-loop Cournot game) extends the Cournot model to include investments in new generation "capacities".

It is from the article Generation capacity expansion in imperfectly competitive restructured electricity markets. (Murphy et al. 2005).

Answer 1

This seems to be related to "capacity investment," or inversión en capacidad. Capacity refers to how much electricity a plant is capable of producing. Apparently, earlier, capacity was assumed to be fairly fixed when setting up and solving the linear programming problem (a type of optimization). What happens if capacity is allowed to vary significantly? In other words, if we make it a fundamental variable? It looks like “capacity expansion models” allow for this.

Thus your phrase could be expressed as

modelos con expansión en capacidad

or

modelos con capacidad expansible

Here's an article in Spanish which talks about inversión en capacidad in a hydroelectric context: http://tesis.pucp.edu.pe/repositorio/handle/123456789/5928

I glanced at the abstract and it looked helpful. I'd suggest looking at the full text. Maybe there will be a helpful reference.

Also, since Murphy and Smeers, and the authors they cite, Massé and Gibrat, appear to have been thinking about these concepts in French, it could be helpful to check how authors writing in French have expressed this and related concepts.

Answer 2

AFAICT after reading Wikipedia's article in economic models, there isn't an established term for that. Which was to be expected, given that even the author is using quotes to denote that "capacity expansion models" is an ad hoc name that they just gave to a class of similar models.

Given that there are other models with names such as Modelo de telaraña, Modelo de crecimiento de Solow, Modelo de competencia perfecta, etc. I don't see why modelos de expansión de la capacidad wouldn't make sense.

Maybe modelos basados en la expansión de la capacidad seems better to you?

Answer 3

The actual order of the words in Spanish when translating that would be : "Modelos de capacidad de expansión"

I'm not an expert on the topic you are referring to but... I hope that by having the right order it helps you find the alternative and technical terminology of the topic.

:) good luck!