At 11:52 AM 1/30/95, Laurie Dougherty wrote: >What happens re: the rate of capacity utilization when a facility completely >or even partially shuts down, or a business fails? It seems to me that in such >cases the remaining capacity would sustain a high utilization rate, while >employment would go down. Supposedly the Fed, which compiles the CU figs, takes all this into account. Who knows? They do benchmark the numbers from time to time, but it all depends on imperfect survey data and estimation technique. But as I said before, these numbers are the best we have. In the 1970s, there was a lot of talk of "phantom capacity" - that inflation and energy costs had devalued a lot of the productive capital stock. Now we hear the opposite - that capaicty is looser than it seems, because of high tech and smart management. Who knows? Close enough for journalism. Doug -- Doug Henwood [[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Left Business Observer 250 W 85 St New York NY 10024-3217 USA 212-874-4020 voice 212-874-3137 fax
