ABSTRACT
The development of these criteria goes in parallel with, but does at all keep exact periodicity with, the rationalization of wholesale prices or the decentralization of output decisions. Let me try to sum up the remoter past. The project makers, who were always told what, and for how long, the final output must be, had to choose the appropriate assets, and so also their design and so the whole technology. The CRE comes out of a different world from the coefficient of absolute effectiveness. The latter is the wave of the future; it betokens an intellectual opening up and a slow marketization; it is easy to understand. The CRE, still the sole investment criterion, was the center of attention. But, as we see in Durgin’s and Giffen’s chapters in the present volume, the CRE raises indirectly every other issue. In 1951-6 economic discussion was forbidden. The fact that the law of value had actually shed blood was easily forgotten.
