SEMAINE D’ETUDE SUR LE ROLE DE L’ANALYSE ECONOMETRIQUE ETc. 1049 
ten year period, 1959-1969, enables us in any case to answer 
the two questions posed in the opening paragraph of this 
paper. Whichever set of factual assumptions concerning the 
base year situation one chooses to accept, one reaches the same 
conclusion that the « break even point » between the rates 
of the economic expansion of the two groups of countries could 
not be reached before the Underdeveloped Areas would raise 
their average annual growth rate to about five percent. To 
accelerate their present much slower pace, they would have to 
double the actual 1959 rate of investment in the very first 
vear and then raise it progressively from year to year. 
To make this possible the annual transfer of (productively 
invested) capital from Developed to Underdeveloped Areas 
would have to increase from $4 to around $15 or even $20 
billion in the first year and then go up annually reaching the 
level of between $28 and $35 billion in the tenth year. 
An assessment of the feasibility of such an ambitious invest- 
ment program for the Underdeveloped countries supported by 
a massive capital inflow from the Developed countries lies out 
side the scope of this paper. 
The factual conclusion drawn from the numerical results 
of our computations has to be accepted, or rejected, in the light 
of the plausibility of the analytical approach and the reliability 
of the factual information on which they are based. Being 
fully conscious of the uncertain and even controversial nature 
of the statistical estimates, which have to be used in such 
aggregative analysis, I purposefully presented not one or two 
but a very large number of alternative projections reflecting a 
wide range of possible initial conditions. The simple analytical 
system developed for that purpose is constructed in such a 
way that with a minimum of computational efforts the spectrum 
of alternative projections can be expanded further through 
insertion in the appropriate computational formula of still other, 
different figures purporting to give a more correct assessment 
of the base year situation. Thus, for example, the estimate 
l13] Leontief - pag. I1