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Embodied labour and competitive prices: a physical quantities approach
*College of William & Mary, and University of Southern Maine USA
Abstract
This paper presents a reformulated concept of value consistent with Marx's approach. The relation between such values and competitive prices is shown to have novel and symmetric characteristics. A new sort of transformation algorithm is proposed: first, use values to transform the conditions of production to create a hypothetical standard technology, in which each commodity is allocated a proportional share of the aggregate inputs; then, solve for production prices simply by calculating the labour directly and indirectly embodied under standard technological conditions. Competitive prices thus represent the average labour contained in commodities, where averaging takes place across industry boundaries.
Manuscript received February 20, 1995; final version received October 23, 1995.