[OPE-L:7964] Re: relation of value to organic composition of capital

From: S.Mohun (S.Mohun@qmul.ac.uk)
Date: Thu Nov 07 2002 - 13:23:20 EST


clyder@gn.apc.org wrote:

> > Response: I don't follow this. But empirically it is wrong. Over the period
> > 1964-2001 for the US economy, we have
> > 1964-1972: OCC greater than VCC
> > 1973-1991: VCC greater than OCC
> > 1992-2001: OCC and VCC virtually identical.
> >
> > To give some idea of orders of magnitude:
> > In 1964 TCC = 41.06, OCC = 3.67, VCC = 3.48.
> > In 2000 TCC = 66.13, OCC = 4.46 and VCC = 4.45
> >
>
> Could you please give the dimensions of the units involved.

TCC: (Net Fixed Assets of productive sectors in) chained 1996 dollars per hour
(of productive labour)
OCC: (Net Fixed Assets of productive sectors in) chained 1996 dollars per chained
1996 dollar (of the gross wages paid to productive labour). The denominator is
deflated by an implicit price deflator for NDP, so the real wages are product
wages.
VCC: (Net Fixed Assets of productive sectors in) current prices per current
dollar (gross wage cost of productive labour)

>
> I assume that OCC and VCC are supposed to be dimensionless, but
> there must be some implicit imputation of a stock to variable
> capital in this. When doing so, what time period do you use.

Annual BLS data adjusted to match NIPA data.

> What is the dimension of TCC, and what is your base year in
> using fixed price valuation.

See above for dimension.
1996 prices.

> How do you account for the introduction
> of qualitatively new MOP over the period?

This is a well-known difficulty which is the subject of much debate. NIPA use
hedonic price indices for computer hardware, eg.

Does this help?

Simon


This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 08 2002 - 00:00:01 EST