388 PONTIFICIAE ACADEMIAE SCIENTIARVM SCRIPTA VARIA -

~ R

Thus, if I could briefly answer to the LEONTIEF point, I would
say that there is no reason to believe that people are more intelligent
now than they have been yesterday.
In addition, as far as a cumulative effect is concerned I have
shown in my 1963 Cambridge paper that, subject to very general
and appealing conditions, it is impossible to expect an indefinite
increase of real national income to result from an indefinite increase
of real capital.

THEIL

Regarding the problem of the accuracy of statistical data, there
's a difficulty which econometricians have to face and which is due
to the considerable margin of uncertainty that economic statisticians
aave to face. For example, it may happen that the « best » estimate,
given the statistical evidence, which an economic statistician can produce
 implies a capital-output ratio which is excessively large compared
 with most published capital-output ratios. We should not
oe surprised when in such cases the statistician decides to replace
ais « best » capital by a lower figure and thus contributes to a too
nomogeneous picture of the stock of published capital-output ratios.
In the same way, if the economic statistician knows or feels that
he knows that the marginal propensity to consume is about 0.8, and
if he finds for a particular year that the consumption change is very
far from 80 per cent of the income change, he may decide to adjust
his figures. This is in my view one of the reasons why our picture
of published correlation coefficients tends to be too optimistic.

ALLAIS

These different observations are very interesting and I think
they should be discussed in the general meeting.
First, as far as the estimates of capital are concerned, it is cer-11]

 Allais - pag. 202