A comment on Andrew's OPE-L:5494:
I think Andrew is raising an important issue here. In the studies of
price/embodied labor coefficient correlation there has been a tendency to
look at statistical measures of correlation, and, in my opinion, an
insufficient discussion of the economically relevant measures of
correlation. In discussion with Ed Chilcote, who is writing his thesis on
this question, it seemed to me that one would like to know what economic
error one would make if one were to proceed only on the basis of
information about direct prices (proportional to embodied labor
coefficients) rather than complete information about market prices.
Cheers,
Duncan
Duncan K. Foley
Department of Economics
Barnard College
New York, NY 10027
(212)-854-3790
fax: (212)-854-8947
e-mail: dkf2@columbia.edu