MEMORANDUM

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One year later, in February 1933, a new application was submitted titled: “Statistical
analysis of the interrelation of industries and the circuit flow of goods.” 207
The outline of the project was the continuation and completion of the empirical project
for the previous year, which we can identify with hindsight as an input-output table for
1919 but this was not apparent from the application. There was in the application a striking
absence of any notion of what was being prepared.
The application stated that the project would be completed in the spring of 1934. That
turned out to be too optimistic but the compilation and organization of data was largely
nevertheless an impressive performance.
Leontief, clearly satisfied with the work of his research assistant, expressed in the new
application that the further participation of Maynard Heins “in the completion of the work
would be very desirable.”
The 1933 application stated that the major part of work in 1933/34, would be
“…devoted to co-ordinating all the different accounts into a single balance of production
and consumption.” This remark in the application is the only indication that what was
prepared was table fulfilling balancing requirements.
The terminology of “single balance” was reminiscent of that used in Popov’s work as
reviewed in the Leontief (1925). Clearly, Leontief’s thorough study of it must have been
very inspirational. , and from which Leontief surely learned something. Note the
linguistically awkward expression of “circuit flow” in the title. This was obviously an
evocation of Kreislauf as used in the title of the 1928 dissertation.
The report from June 1934 was disappointingly minimalistic. It just stated that the
project was “completed in its main part.” Nothing was stated about the dimensions of the
table and the industrial specifications.
It seems that the empirical work in Leontief’s first two years at Harvard was driven by
its own dynamics, rather than by an overall theoretical design, towards a table giving a so
complete picture as possible of the interrelations of the economy within the limits set by
available data? It may seem as if it was the completion of the empirical table which
theoretical scheme; (2) gathering necessary empirical material; (3) applying the “theoretical devices”
to analysis of the factual data. But in the case of input-output it seems that (2) preceded (1).
207 Leontief tried out names for the table. In 1932 he had no name for it, in 1933 he used
“interrelation of industries”, amended the following year to “mutual interrelation of American
industries.” In Leontief (1936) it had become “quantitative input and output relations.” The “inputoutput”
term emerged later, presumably from the title of Leontief (1936). “Input-output analysis”
was coined during WWII at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
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