SEMAINE D'ÉTUDE SUR LE ROLE DE L’ANALYSE ECONOMETRIQUE ETC.

613

3. A more complete formulation of the effective demand condition


It may be useful to take a further step, at this point, to
complete formulation (III.g). So far, population has been referred
 to in general terms, both with respect to demand of commodities
 and with respect to supply of labour. This means
assuming implicitly that population and labour force are the
same thing. But in practice, this is not so. All people do contribute
 to the demand of commodities, but only a fraction of
them (representing the active population) actually take part
in the process of production. Moreover, a further complication
arises in connection with the fact that our coefficients have a
‘ime dimension. The point may be made clearer by supposing
a finite period, for example a year, as the unit of time. In
‘his case, the consumption coefficients refer to yearly per-capita
consumption; but, as a normal practice, the technical coefficients
 are referred to that fraction of the unit of time which
corresponds to actual working time. If this is done, the a,,’s
and the a,;s come to be no longer expressed in terms of the
same number of people and not even to refer to the same unit
of time.

To be consistent, a correction must be made on the technical
 coefficients and the simplest way to do it is to divide each of
‘hem by two parameters, the first of which — let us call it à —
representing the proportion of active. to total population, and
the second — let use call it 3 — representing the proportion
of, let us say, working hours to the total number of hours forming
 the unit of time considered. Evidently:

10] Pasinetti - pag. 43