Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- A reader's guide
- 1 Free competition and long-period positions
- 2 A one-commodity model
- 3 Two-commodity models
- 4 Models with any number of commodities
- 5 Choice of technique
- 6 Alternative descriptions of a technique
- 7 Fixed capital
- 8 Joint production
- 9 Jointly utilized machines
- 10 Land
- 11 Persistent wage and profit rate differentials
- 12 On limits to the long-period method
- 13 Production as a circular flow and the concept of surplus
- 14 The neoclassical theory of distribution and the problem of capital
- 15 On some alternative theories of distribution
- Mathematical appendix
- References
- Name index
- Subject index
6 - Alternative descriptions of a technique
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- A reader's guide
- 1 Free competition and long-period positions
- 2 A one-commodity model
- 3 Two-commodity models
- 4 Models with any number of commodities
- 5 Choice of technique
- 6 Alternative descriptions of a technique
- 7 Fixed capital
- 8 Joint production
- 9 Jointly utilized machines
- 10 Land
- 11 Persistent wage and profit rate differentials
- 12 On limits to the long-period method
- 13 Production as a circular flow and the concept of surplus
- 14 The neoclassical theory of distribution and the problem of capital
- 15 On some alternative theories of distribution
- Mathematical appendix
- References
- Name index
- Subject index
Summary
In this book production is conceived of as a circular process: commodities are produced by means of commodities. The present chapter is devoted to an investigation of three alternative ways to describe the technical conditions of production and a discussion of the relationships which exist between them and the description provided in the previous chapters. First, there is the view that production can be seen as a one-way avenue leading from the services of the “original” factors of production, labor and land, to the final product. Since in the following discussion we shall set aside the problem of land services, the product will be considered as obtained by a stream of labor inputs only. This approach to the theory of production is known as the “Austrian” approach, since it has been advocated by the founders of the Austrian tradition in economic thought, Menger, von Wieser, and von Böhm–Bawerk, and authors working in that tradition, most notably Wicksell and, more recently, Hicks. Second, there is the description of the conditions of production in terms of the concept of “vertical integration.” The latter consists of a generalization of the concept of the “sub-system” introduced in Chapter 3 for the two-commodity case. According to the third alternative the price vectors generated by a technique at a number of different levels of the rate of profit can be used to describe that technique.
Throughout this chapter we will be concerned with a single “technique” as defined in the previous chapter and not with the whole set of existing processes.
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- Information
- Theory of ProductionA Long-Period Analysis, pp. 164 - 185Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995