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(!) Activities of the Nobel Prize Winner W. W. Leontief
Our compatriot, bom in Leningrad, Leontief obtained a post at the University of Kiel in Germany
in 1927. In 1931 he moved to Harvard and was appointed Professor of Economics there in
1946. In 1973 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics. Apart from the works mentioned
below, his publications include Studies in the Structure of the American Economy (1953), Input-
Output Economics, Collected Essays (1966) and The Future of the World Economy (1977).
The interdependence of the various sectors of a country’s economy has long been appreciated
by economists. The theme can be traced from Cantillon and Quesnay and the “ tableau economique"
through Marx and Walras. The sheer complexity of the interactions and interrelationships between
the different sectors of a modem economy was a Gordian knot which had to be cut before the
theoretical structure could be translated into a practical reflection of an actual economy and serve
as the basis for policy recommendations. Leontief s achievement was to see the solution of this
problem in matrix algebra, and modem computers have made input—output analysis a practical
proposition. His book The Structure of the American Economy, 1919—1929, was first published in
1941, and a second edition, 1919-1939, appeared in 1951. In these studies he attempted, with the
limited statistical facts available to him, to establish a “ tableau economique" of the USA.
The economy was described as an integrated system of flows or transfers from each activity of
production, consumption or distribution to each other activity. Each sector absorbs the outputs
from other sectors and itself produces commodities or services which are in turn used up by other
sectors, either for further processing or for final consumption. All these flows or transfers were set
out in a rectangular table — an input—output matrix. The way in which the outputs of any industry
spread out through the rest of the economy could be seen from the elements making up the rows.
Similarly, the origins of its inputs could be seen directly from the elements of the appropriate column.
Given such a structure, the implications of a specific change in one part of the economy
could be traced through to all the elements in the system.
Дата публикования: 2014-12-28; Прочитано: 170 | Нарушение авторского права страницы | Мы поможем в написании вашей работы!