Capital theory and political economy : prices, income distribution and stability / Lefteris Tsoulfidis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Tsoulfidis, Lefteris, author.

Series:

Routledge Frontiers of Political Economy

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Capital.

Income distribution.

Wages.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (243 pages) : illustrations

Edition:

1 Edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Routledge, 2021.

Summary:

"In recent years there have been a number of new developments in what came to be known as the "Capital Theory Debates". The debates took place mainly during the 1960s as a result of Piero Sraffa's critique of the neoclassical theory according to which the prices of factors of production directly depend on their relative scarcities. Sraffa showed that when income distribution changes there are many complexities developed within the economic system impacting on prices in ways which are not possible to predict. These debates were revisited in the 1980s and again more recently, along with a parallel literature which has developed among neoclassical economists which has also looked at the impact of shocks on an economy. This book summarizes the debates and issues around the theory of capital and brings to the fore the more recent developments. It also pinpoints the similarities and differences between the various approaches and critically evaluates them in light of available empirical evidence. The focus of the book is on the price trajectories induced by changes in income distribution and the resulting shape of the wage rates of profit curves and frontier. These issues are central to areas such as microeconomics, international trade, growth, technological change and macro stability analysis. Each chapter starts with the theoretical issues involved, followed by their formalization and subsequently with their operationalization. More specifically, the variables of the classical theory of value and distribution are rigorously defined and quantified using actual input-output data from a number of major economies, but mainly from the USA, over long stretches of time. The empirical results are not only consistent with the anticipations of the theory but also further inform and therefore strengthen its predictive content raising new significant questions"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Cover

Half Title

Series Page

Title Page

Copyright Page

Table of Contents

List of figures

List of tables

List of Abbreviations

Preface and acknowledgments

1 Preliminaries

1.1 Introduction

1.2 Structure of the book

2 Theory of capital in historical perspective

2.1 Introduction

2.2 Capital in theories of value and distribution

2.3 Capital in the broad classical approach

2.4 Capital in the neoclassical theory

2.5 Production with capital and the early neoclassical economists

2.6 Summary and conclusions

3 Capital theory controversies

3.1 Introduction

3.2 Cambridge capital theory controversies

3.3 Production with produced means of production

3.4 Samuelson's one-commodity world

3.5 From the one-commodity to the world of many commodities

3.6 Reswitching of techniques and the demand for capital

3.7 Summary and conclusions

Appendix 3.A: Samuelson's and Pasinetti's reswitching examples

4 Price trajectories and the rate of profit

4.1 Introduction

4.2 Prices of production and their determinants

4.2.1 The mathematics of the linear model of production

4.3 Price paths using input-output data, BEA 2018

4.3.1 The fixed capital model, BEA 2018

4.3.2 The circulating capital model, BEA 2018

4.4 Price paths using input-output data, USA 2014

4.4.1 The fixed capital model, USA 2014, WIOD (2016)

4.4.2 The circulating capital model, USA 2014

4.5 Summary and conclusions

Appendix 4.A: Sources of data and estimating methods

5 Wage rate of profit curves and technological change

5.1 Introduction

5.2 Survey of the first empirical studies

5.3 Technological change and wage rate of profit curves

5.4 The choice of numéraires and the standard commodity

5.5 WRP curves in 49 industries, USA 2007 and 2014

5.5.1 WRP curves, circulating capital model.

5.5.2 WRP curves, fixed capital model

5.6 Discussion of empirical findings

5.6.1 Some recent developments

5.7 Summary and conclusions

Appendix 5.A: Further testing of the randomness hypothesis

6 Distribution of eigenvalues and the shape of price and wage rates of profit curves

6.1 Introduction

6.2 Bródy's conjecture

6.2.1 Evolution of spectral ratio and the size of matrices

6.3 Eigendecomposition, price trajectories and dimensionality reduction

6.4 Eigendecomposition and the circulating capital model

6.4.1 Second-order approximation of PRP trajectories

6.4.2 The distribution of eigenvalues and the near linearities in PRP trajectories

6.5 Factorization and the construction of a hyper-basic sector

6.5.1 The Application of the SVD factorization method

6.5.2 The fixed capital model and the hyper-basic industry

6.6 Summary and conclusions

Appendix 6.A: Digression in the effective rank

7 A simple but realistic linear model of production

7.1 Introduction

7.2 Input-output data and the estimation of relative equilibrium prices

7.3 A Realistic numerical example and the estimation of direct prices

7.3.1 Direct prices, prices of production and market prices

7.3.2 The Sraffian standard commodity

7.4 Prices of production in circulating and fixed capital models I and II

7.4.1 Prices of production in a circulating capital model

7.4.2 Prices of production in a fixed capital model I

7.4.3 Prices of production in a fixed capital model II

7.5 Prices of production/direct prices trajectories

7.5.1 PP/DP trajectories, circulating capital model

7.5.2 PP/DP trajectories, fixed capital model I

7.5.3 PP/DP trajectories, fixed capital model II

7.6 Wage rate of profit curves

7.7 The eigendecomposition and the approximations of price trajectories

7.8 Hyper-basic industry.

7.9 Summary and conclusions

8 Summing-up

8.1 Introduction

8.2 Capital theory debates in retrospect

8.3 Capital theory debates in prospect

8.4 Concluding remarks

References

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-351-23942-2

1-351-23941-4

1-351-23940-6

9781351239424

OCLC:

1243537711