Essays in Modern Capital Theory

Essays in Modern Capital Theory
Author: Murray Brown
Publisher:
Total Pages: 312
Release: 1976
Genre: Capital
ISBN:

Monograph comprising essays on topics relating to the use of economic theories of capital in economic analysis - discusses the 'Cambridge controversy' in capital theory involving income distribution, rates of investment return and profit, the input output relations with regard to technology and capital goods, and presents three new approaches to capital theory centred on the notion of economic equilibrium and an economic model based on Marxism. Bibliographys after most chapters and graphs.

Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Capital in the Twenty-First Century
Author: Thomas Piketty
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 817
Release: 2017-08-14
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0674979850

What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories. In this work the author analyzes a unique collection of data from twenty countries, ranging as far back as the eighteenth century, to uncover key economic and social patterns. His findings transform debate and set the agenda for the next generation of thought about wealth and inequality. He shows that modern economic growth and the diffusion of knowledge have allowed us to avoid inequalities on the apocalyptic scale predicted by Karl Marx. But we have not modified the deep structures of capital and inequality as much as we thought in the optimistic decades following World War II. The main driver of inequality--the tendency of returns on capital to exceed the rate of economic growth--today threatens to generate extreme inequalities that stir discontent and undermine democratic values if political action is not taken. But economic trends are not acts of God. Political action has curbed dangerous inequalities in the past, the author says, and may do so again. This original work reorients our understanding of economic history and confronts us with sobering lessons for today.

Austrian Capital Theory

Austrian Capital Theory
Author: Peter Lewin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 102
Release: 2019-01-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 110875273X

This Element presents a new framework for Austrian capital theory, starting from the notion that capital is value. Capital is the value attributed by the valuer at any moment in time to the combination of production-goods and labor available for production. Capital is the result obtained by calculating the current value of a business-unit or business-project that employs resources over time. It is the result of a (subjective) entrepreneurial calculation process that relates the flow of consumptions goods to the value of the productive resources that will produce those consumptions goods. The entrepreneur is a ubiquitous calculating presence. In a review of the development of Austrian capital theory, by Carl Menger, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig Lachmann as well as recent contributions, the Element incorporates the seminal contributions into the new framework in order to provide a more accessible perspective on Austrian capital theory.

Introduction to Modern Austrian Capital Theory

Introduction to Modern Austrian Capital Theory
Author: Malte Faber
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3642483100

During the fifties and the sixties the neoclassical concept of the production function was criticized in numerous papers. In particular, the aggregation of different capital goods into a single number was reprehended. A second essential disadvantage, namely the neglect of the time structure of the production process, found, however, rela tively little attention. While up to the thirties the Austrian capital theory which stressed the time aspect of production was an important school, it fell into oblivion after the great capital controversies of the thirties. It took over thirty years, i. e. till the beginning of the seventies be fore it came to a renaissance of the Austrian capital theory by var ious writers. We may roughly classify the different attempts of Hits rebirth in modern economics" into three groups: 1. The approach of ~ [1970, 1973, 1973a] has received most of the attention in the literature (Burmeister [1974], Faber [1975], Fehl [1975], ~[1975], Hagemann and ~ [1976]). It will be shown in Chapter 9 that ~ is only in so far a Neo-Austrian as he does explicitly take into consideration the vertical time structure of the production process. But he does not use the Austrian concepts of superiority of roundabout methods, of time preference and of the period of production. 2. The latter concept has been revived by the second group, to which Tintner [1970], von Weizs~cker [1971a, 1971b, 1974], ~ [1971, 1976 and ~ [1973, 1975, 1976] belong.

Capital Theory and Political Economy

Capital Theory and Political Economy
Author: Lefteris Tsoulfidis
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2021-05-31
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1351239406

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 that has developed among neoclassical economists and 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.

Modern Imperialism, Monopoly Finance Capital, and Marx's Law of Value

Modern Imperialism, Monopoly Finance Capital, and Marx's Law of Value
Author: Samir Amin
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2018-02-22
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1583676570

The complete collection of Samir Amin's work on Marxism value theory Unlike such obvious forms of oppression as feudalism or slavery, capitalism has been able to survive through its genius for disguising corporate profit imperatives as opportunities for individual human equality and advancement. But it was the genius of Karl Marx, in his masterwork, Capital, to discover the converse law of surplus value: behind the illusion of the democratic, supply-and-demand marketplace, lies the workplace, where people trying to earn a living are required to work way beyond the time it takes to pay their wages. Leave it to the genius of Samir Amin to advance Marx's theories—adding to them the work of radical economists such as Michal Kalecki, Josef Steindl, Paul Baran, and Paul Sweezy—to show how Marxian theory can be adapted to modern economic conditions. Amin extends Marx's analysis to describe a concept of “imperialist rent” derived from the radically unequal wages paid for the same labor done by people in both the Global North and the Global South, the rich nations and the poor ones. This is global oligopolistic capitalism, in which finance capital has come to dominate worldwide production and distribution. Amin also advances Baran and Sweezy’s notion of economic surplus to explain a globally monopolized system in which Marx's “law of value” takes the form of a “law of globalized value,” generating a super-exploitation of workers in the Global South. Modern Imperialism, Monopoly Finance Capital, and Marx's Law of Value offers readers, in one volume, the complete collection of Samir Amin’s work on Marxian value theory. The book includes texts from two of Amin's recent works, Three Essays on Marx’s Value Theory and The Law of Worldwide Value, which have provoked considerable controversy and correspondence. Here, Amin answers his critics with a series of letters, clarifying and developing his ideas. This work will occupy an important place among the theoretical resources for anyone involved in the study of contemporary Marxian economic and political theory.