Re: The increasing transformation problem

From: Paul Cockshott (wpc@DCS.GLA.AC.UK)
Date: Thu Jun 05 2003 - 10:42:04 EDT


Ernesto Screpanti wrote:

> Problem:
>
> When the organic composition of capital is not uniform, production prices
> are different from labour values.
> Is it possible to say that the greater the dispersion of organic
> compositions the higher the differences between prices and labour values.
> In other words: is it true that the price-value differences are an
> increasing function of the differences between the actual and the average
> organic composition of capital?
>

There is some evidence to support this.



Values are generally equally good as or better than production prices
as estimates of market prices.
This is supported by a number of studies.

but there is a positive correlation between
o and m/v where
m= market price
v= value of a commodity
o = organic composition of the capital used in making it.
This result is supported by investigations that I have done
with Allin.

What is interesting is that the correlation is not a strong as
predicted by the theory in volume III of capital. Actual
prices seem to be about half way between untransformed
values and fully transformed prices of production.

>
> My intuitive answer is Yes. But I do not trust intuition so much.
>
> Does anybody know if that proposition was proved by somebody?
>
> Ernesto

--
Paul Cockshott
Dept Computing Science
University of Glasgow

0141 330 3125


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