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Labour versus Alternative Value Bases in Actual Joint Production Systems

GEORGE SOKLIS


This paper extends the empirical investigation of the relationships between actual prices, labour values and commodity values to the case of joint production using data from the Supply and Use Tables of the Finnish (for the year 2004) and Japanese (for the year 2000) economies. Our findings show that (i) the systems under investigation do not have the usual properties of single-product systems; (ii) in the case of the Finnish economy, the exploration of the relationships between prices and additive labour values is without economic meaning; and (iii) in the case of the Japanese economy, there exist vectors of additive commodity values that are better approximations of actual prices than additive labour values. Thus, it is argued that the claim that actual economic systems can be adequately interpreted in terms of labour values is open to serious doubts.

Volume :- No.9 (2015)

Issue No :- 1 (2015)

Pages :- 1-31

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