Back to Steedman
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[Note: I hope I'm not wearing out my welcome too rapidly. I think it
will take about 10 messages in all, of roughly this length, to get the
position I'm peddling "out into the open" -- perhaps Michael P can tell
me to shut up if necessary.]
1. What does one need to know in order to calculate labor-values?
The input-output structure of the economy, including intersectoral
technical coefficients and direct labor coefficients. With this knowledge,
one can invert the "Leontief matrix" (or perform an iterative
approximation of same) and derive the full set of labor-values. (With
the same information, and by means of the same computations, one can
determine the vector of gross outputs required to support any given
vector of final demand -- a basic planning problem.)
2. What does one need to know to calculate Sraffian prices? Basically
the same: the full set of input-output coefficients, plus a distributional
variable -- either the (uniform) wage or the (uniform) rate of profit.
3. Is it in any way necessary to calculate labor-values as a step on the
way to calculating Sraffian prices? No. This is one of Steedman's key
points, and of course he is right. In this sense there is no
"transformation problem". *If* one's object is to derive the set of
Sraffian prices or "prices of production," one does not have to go via
labor-values. That would be an awkward detour. And the question
"What is the correct mathematical relationship between labor-values
and prices of production?" would seem to be of interest only if one has
some prior commitment to labor-values. Why should one have any
such commitment? Labor-values seem to be analytically redundant.
4. But this argument loses its force if, as I have claimed, it turns out that
labor-values and prices of production are about equally good as
predictors of actual prices in capitalist economies. Labor-values are a
"detour" only if one's theoretical terminus is prices of production/Sraffian
prices -- but why should *that* be one's theoretical terminus if one's
ultimate object is to analyze real economies and their laws of motion?
End of posting the fourth.
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Allin Cottrell
Department of Economics
Wake Forest University
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(910) 759-5762
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