Hua Xili Leontiefu's Academic Achievements

Input-output method is a method to study economic problems. Leontief began to study the input-output method in the early 1930s. 1936 published the article "Quantitative Relationship between Input and Output in American Economic System", which expounded the compilation of the first input-output table in the United States in 19 19, the input-output theory and corresponding model, as well as the data source and calculation method. 194 1 year, Leontief published the first monograph on input-output analysis, 19 19 ~ 1929. During the Second World War, due to the needs of the war, governments of various countries strengthened their intervention and control over the economy, and needed a fairly scientific and accurate calculation tool. Input-output method has gradually attracted the attention of American government and economists. In order to study the post-war production and employment in the United States, the United States Department of Labor hired Leontief to guide the compilation of the American input-output table 1939. Five years after the completion of 1944, the US Department of Labor immediately used this table to predict the employment situation in the United States in February of 1945 and the output of various economic sectors in the United States under the condition of full employment in 1950. Later, the economic development of the United States confirmed the accuracy of the forecast. So in 1949, the US Air Force cooperated with the US Department of Labor to organize a compilation team of more than 70 people, which cost1500,000 US dollars. By the autumn of 1952, the input-output tables of 200 departments in the United States were compiled in 1947. Since then, the U.S. government has regularly compiled national input-output tables as the basis for national economic accounting and economic policy decisions.

The characteristics and advantages of input-output analysis are that it can be used to study practical economic problems. It is a quantitative and systematic method to study the relationship between different departments in complex economic entities. This economic entity can be as big as a country, even the whole world, as small as the economy of a province, city and enterprise sector.

Economic forecasting is the most widely used input-output method. It is also an important application of input-output analysis to study what impact the implementation of an economic policy will have on the social economy. Input-output analysis can also be used to study some special social problems, such as environmental pollution, population and world economic structure. It was not until Vernon put forward the "product cycle theory" in 1966 that the "Leontief mystery" was solved. In Vernon's view, scientific and technological innovation plays a very important role in foreign trade, that is, the initial monopoly advantage of innovative products and the loss of monopoly advantage formed after technology transfer and diffusion determine the pattern change of international trade, thus promoting the evolution of a country's industrial structure.

This can be seen more clearly from the change of American industrial structure. Since 1980s, American government has increased its support for R&; D (research and development) support. 1994 American r&; D development investment reached $654.38+073.02 billion, surpassing Japan and Germany in R&D; D The total investment (US$ 6,543.8+US$ 070.74 billion) accounts for 2. 1% of the US GDP. In this way, the contribution rate of high-tech industries to American economic growth has increased from about 1986 ~ 14% in 19 1 ~ 1995 to more than 28% in/kloc-0. After technological transformation, the competitiveness of traditional industries such as American automobiles has also generally improved. From 1986 to 1995, the proportion of knowledge products exported by the United States in its total exports increased from 12% to 42%. Leontief and other foreign economists fully affirmed the enthusiasm and scientificity of Das Kapital's theory on the economic contradictions and laws of movement in capitalist society. Leontief pointed out: "Before trying to make any explanation, if a person wants to know what the profits and wages of capitalist enterprises are actually, then the information he can get from the three volumes of Das Kapital will be better than that he can find in the tenth issue of the American Statistical Census, dozens of textbooks on contemporary economic system, and even, I dare say, all the papers of Thorstein Van Buren."