From: Paul Cooney (pcooney@GLOVESOFF.ORG)
Date: Fri Jun 02 2006 - 19:46:57 EDT
Ian, With respect to calculating marxist value categories from national accounts data, substantial transformations are involved, given the significant underlying theoretical differences between the latter, which are keynesian categories and marxist categories. As part of my dissertation, I was involved with such a project, the results of which are presented in Shaikh and Tonak's Measuring the Wealth of Nations. This book shows that there are substantial differences of macro aggregates when comparing keynesian and marxist categories. On the one hand, one can argue that all data is 'dirty', however, those that conduct empirical analysis have no choice but to work with published empirical data, and of course others will take issue with Shaikh and Tonak's approach. Nevertheless, Shaikh and Tonak's work is one of the most comprehensive efforts at presenting marxist categories empircally and serves as a key reference for empirical inquiries such as the one you suggest in your post comradely, Paul Cooney Quoting Ian Wright <wrighti@ACM.ORG>: > Jurriaan > > You asked: > > "how do national accountants get from observed PRICES to a macroeconomic > > aggregate of "gross VALUE added"? which is a kind of inverse > transformation > > problem. > > To translate from prices to labour values we need a MELT. I asked > whether the average wage rate might do the job. > > You wrote: > > > and I fail to see the point of dividing the net product by the wage rate. > > I was thinking that dividing the net product by the wage rate will > give an estimate of the labour value of the net product. Is there > something theoretically unsound about this? Or is there a practical > accounting problem? > > Best wishes, > -Ian. > --
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