SEMAINE D'ÉTUDE SUR LE ROLE DE L’ANALYSE ECONOMETRIQUE ETC. 
08; 
not necessarily the type of goods that are the easiest to pro- 
duce. Even if we supposed that consumers’ preferences were 
such as to require a uniform expansion of production of all 
commodities, there is no reason to expect that the composition 
of production preferred by consumers should coincide with 
‘he composition of production which technology would require 
in order to achieve the maximum rate of uniform growth. If 
‘hese two compositions do not coincide — as would always 
be the case, except by a fluke — the composition according 
to consumers’ preferences might evidently rank much higher, 
in terms of individual utilities and welfare, than the compo- 
sition according to the voN NEUMANN criterion. The latter 
would indeed yield a higher rate of overall growth. but many 
commodities might remain unwanted. 
Secondly, as has been argued in Chapter IV, the consu- 
mers who enjoy an increasing per-capita income do not want 
1 proportional increase of all the commodities they consume. 
As soon as their demand for each commodity approaches sa- 
curation, they are bound to spend the incrasing income on 
different goods. This leads us to a stronger conclusion than 
‘he one reached above. The voN NEUMANN concept of maxi- 
mum rate of growth, if applied to a system with technical 
progress, not only may not, but actually can never, correspond 
— not even by a fluke — to the optimum pattern of growth, 
…e., to the pattern of growth that consumers prefer. 
Thirdly and finally, there is also the reverse side of the 
coin. The von NEUMANN approach imposes on the system 
‘he requirement that all commodities should grow at the same 
rate. This is an unjustified restriction. There might well 
be just one commodity in the system which is very dif- 
ficult to produce, in the sense that its production can only 
grow very slowly through time. Now, in the voN NEUMANN 
model, which insists on the requirement that all productions 
must expand at the same rate, that commodity inevitably 
10] Pasinetti - pag. 113