Short-Run Price Effects of the Corporate Income Tax and Implications for International Trade: Comment
评论了Melvin使用投入产出表估算公司所得税对商品价格影响的方法，指出其误用了投入产出逆矩阵，导致结果概念上不正确。
In his recent article in this Review, James Melvin stated his purpose to be estimation of the commodity-price effects of the corporate income through the use of the input-output (p. 773). While the input-output (I-0) tables and techniques are practicable for use in many problems, they are, unfortunately, of limited use in this case. But, more significantly, the particular use Melvin makes is actually a misuse of the input-output tables. Through a misinterpretation of the nature of the A table of input-output coefficients, Melvin accepts the standard, published (I A)inverse as a proper vehicle for price change analysis. That is, the U.S. is used, improperly, to derive estimates of price changes in the economy which would result from initially impacted cost changes in value-added. The inability of the published to provide price change estimates is not generally noted in I-0 literature while, at the same time, there are some unsupported allusions to the possible use of this table for price analysis. Somehow the I-0 is accepted as a generalized economic tool that can readily be used for analysis of a too-wide range of economic variables. The problem, I believe, relates in part to shorthand references to the actual title of the inverse. As published by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), for the 1967 base tables, the complete title of the U.S. is Total (Direct and Indirect) per dollar of Delivery to Final Demand (Producers' Prices), ('Base Year' Dollars). Too often only the Total Requirements part of this title is noted and considered. Yet this actually treats all values applied to it as though they are values, regardless of how they are characterized by the analyst. If, perchance, the characterized use is consistent with the final demand concept there is no problem; otherwise the consequence is a misuse and misinterpretation of results. Associated with this unheeding of the full title is the existence of a widely accepted misconception regarding the characteristics of the table coefficients. This misconception is that the coefficients in the represent direct and indirect requirements associated in such a way with the of an industry that the coefficients can be used with any values to derive estimates of whatever impact is desired. All too often total output values are applied against an without recognition or acknowledgment that this is a special, and not the normal, usage of the I-0 table.' Whether associated with the limited literature in this area or for some other reason, Melvin has gone ahead and used some interesting mathematical transformations to show that the inverse matrix from input-output analysis... gives us a simple way of calculating the price effect of the corporate income tax (p. 767). Since Melvin has derived algebraically a result which is conceptually incorrect there must be some demonstrable point at which his mathematics went astray. This