Duncan writes: >The current rate of nominal GDP is $9.3 trillion/year, and current >U.S. employment is about 133 million, so the U.S. MELT is about >$70,000 per worker per year. I tried to find hours per year for the >U.S. labor force, but I couldn't. It must be roughly 1900-2000 hours >per year, so this works out to about $35/hour. There are lots of empirical difficulties for the UK economy, particularly in guesstimating hours worked. And productive and unproductive labour are problems too. And continuities and breaks in the series, and lots of other problems. But for what it's worth, my provisional estimates for the UK economy are as follows: Assume all labour is productive. Then the value of money falls from 5.0992 in 1948 to 0.0835 in 1996. Taking the inverses for the MELT, an average worker produced 0.1961 sterling pounds per hour of value in 1948, and 11.97 sterling pounds per hour of value in 1996. Assume only some labour is productive (C-P-C' is productive; C'-M-C is unproductive in terms of circuit of capital). Then the value of money falls from 2.7909 in 1948 to 0.0239 in 1996. Taking the inverses for the MELT, an average worker produced 0.358 sterling pounds per hour of value in 1948, and 41.81 sterling pounds per hour of value in 1996. There are lots of empirical problems, and one needs a feel for plausible orders of magnitude. But ex post it's certainly possible to calculate time series of the value of money and its inverse. One might not have a theory of determination, but at least rough accounting measures are possible (ven if they still need more work!) Simon Mohun Dr. Simon Mohun, HoD, Dept of Economics, Queen Mary, University of London, London E1 4NS, UK Tel: +44 (0)20 7882 5089; Fax: +44 (0)20 8983 3580
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