MEMORANDUM

assertions there were further articles by Soviet economists discussing whether input-output
economics had been invented in the Soviet Union and usually citing Leontief’s Planovoe
Khoziaistvo article. 97
There is, however, no foreshadowing of Leontief’s input-output tables of the mid-
1930s in the Bilanz article but there is an insightful discussion of the relation between gross
product and gross production, of double accounting, and other related topics of a kind that
would have had to precede the development of empirical input-output tables.
In 1927 Leontief published the Konzentration paper in Jahrbücher für
Nationalökonomie und Statistik (Leontief 1927a) titled The theory and statistical
description of concentration. Like the Bilanz paper it took off from a Russian statistical
publication but it was a theoretical paper, not a review. The opening paragraph is worth
quoting because it stated the essential characteristics idea of Leontief’s research method:
“Any purposeful statistical investigation of a phenomenon requires a special
conceptual apparatus, a theory that will enable the investigator to select from
among the numberless multitude of facts those that prospectively fit into some
pattern and hence are susceptible to systematization. Even such a relatively simple
event as a shift in population must first be placed within a rather complicated
conceptual framework before it can be dealt with directly in a statistical
investigation. The more complicated the object of inquiry, the more important its
theoretical ‘preparation’, so to speak. Accordingly, we too are obliged to erect the
requisite theoretical framework before we proceed to the purely statistical aspect of
our topic.” (Leontief 1977, p.10).
Leontief stated in retrospect that his intention with the Konzentration paper had indeed
been to include an empirical analysis but time ran out for him. 98 The research method
expounded in the quote from the article as erecting a theoretical framework before
proceeding to empirical study is a version of the approach of pre-eminence of theory,
adhering by several of the early econometricians, e.g. Ragnar Frisch.
Economic Planning Commission of the USSR (Gosplan); he continued his work on balances of
national economy in the United States.” (Lange 1963, p.185, fn.39, based on the Polish edition of
1959). These assertions seem to be unfounded and therefore puzzling. See also Leontief (1960).
97 The discussion continued to the end of the Soviet era, see e.g. Jasny (1962), Levine (1964),
Spulber and Dadkah (1975), and Belykh (1989).
98 Rosier (1985, p.80).
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