4 - Production and exchange

Summary

Intersectoral flows

Table 4.1 shows the intersectoral flows in six of the eight communities studied; that is, it replaces the symbols of Table 2.1 with empirical data, with one modification: the production of each separate sector of intermediate goods – the first three columns of Table 2.1 – has been consolidated into one column. This has been done for the sake of simplicity and also because it is often difficult to separate the production of intermediate goods by sector. The N column refers to non-monetary barter transactions, and the M column to monetary transactions. The former principally measures transactions with other communities, the latter transactions with the rest of the economy, above all the urban economy. Two of the communities – Ttiomayo and Sihuina – have been omitted on account of the incompleteness of the data, but the other six are sufficiently well distributed among ecological levels for the representativeness of the sample not to be affected significantly. Of course, whenever only these six communities have been used in tabulations, the weights of the sampled families have been changed accordingly to get the expanded values for ‘sample total’ and ‘southern sierra’.

The reader will note that Table 4.1 contains certain identities. The figure at the bottom of column 1 is the same as the A + P + Z in the last column. The former represents the value of production viewed from the side of the cost of production whereas the latter is the value of production by destination (deliveries), and both must be equal. Because of this identity, self-employment (row 20) was estimated by difference.