Post-Keynesian

Figure 1: A Switch Point On The Wage Frontier with Wage Curves Tangent This post extends the example in my article in Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, suitably emended. Figure 2 shows an enlargement of part of the parameter space. The parameters of the point where the boundaries of Regions 1, 2, and 3 intersect are shown. In Region 1, the Beta technique is uniquely cost-minimizing for all feasible wages; there are no switch points. Region 2 is a reswitching example, with Beta...

Figure 1: Switch Points On The Axis For The Rate Of Profits And At r = -100 Percent This is an example of a fluke case in the analysis of the choice of technique. The interest in flukes, for me, is that they show how the characteristics of markets can change. They provide insight into structural economic dynamics, as Luigi Pasinetti calls it. I have previously shown a fluke case, with a switch point on the axis for the rate of profits with a real Wicksell effect of zero. A perturbation...

Figure 1: Specification of a Market Algorithm1.0 Introduction This article is heavily based on Bidard (2004). An approach to the analysis of the choice of technique, in keeping with construction of the outer envelope of wage curves, is to consider replacing processes, more or less, one at a time. This post presents this approach as following an algorithm. Assume that a set of techniques exist where all techniques are at least viable, indecomposable, and produce the same set of...

Figure 1: Real Factor Price Frontier1.0 Introduction I am planning on posting at an even slower rate for a while. This post continues my exploration of a way of visualizing the choice of technique proposed by Carlo Milana. In this post, I show how to correctly apply his visualization to an example from my 2017 ROPE paper. 2.0 Technology Two techniques are available for producing corn, the consumption good. Each technique consists of a flow-input, point-output technology, with a finite...

1.0 Introduction This post is about some usages of the phrase "democratic socialism". 2.0 Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) In the context of current American politics, I think the most salient usage today of this phrase is associated with Bernie Sanders' campaign and with the Democratic Socialists of America. DSA was founded in 1982 when the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC) merged with the New American Movement (NAM). The DSOC was established with Michael...

[embedded content]Some Mathematics Useful In Understanding Classical Political Economy I consider the following to have been well established about half a century ago: Marginalism or so-called neoclassical economics is impossible to formulate consistently and with practical applications. A mathematically rigorous approach to the classical theory of value, from William Petty through David Ricardo, including Karl Marx, exists. Mainstream economists ignore the truth of both propositions....

Maybe this post should be titled "Erratum" or "corrigendum". I have an example in my paper last year in which wage frontiers are supposed to vary with two parameters. One is the markup in the "iron" industry. And the other is σ t. The example should be as in Table 1. All the theory and the visualizations in the paper work out with this example. Table 1: Technology for Producing Steel and Corn InputIndustryIronCornAlphaBetaLabora0,1 = 1aα,0,2(t) = (5191/5770) e(1/10) - σ taβ,0,2 =...

John Weeks presents Joan Robinson's contributions to the Cambridge Capital Controversy (CCC). A discussion, from 2006, on Daily Kos, about one of my attempts to explain the CCC. A post, from 2016, on Naked Capitalism about how the CCC shows microeconomics is all wet. J. W. Mason has a handout explaining a definition of capital. Doyne Farmer, Fotini Markopoulou, Eric Beinhocker, and Steen Rasmussen, in an essay in Aeon, Collaborators in creation, provide an overview of complexity economics....

A nice review of my book by Marc Morgan has appeared in American Affairs. Morgan works with Thomas Piketty at the World Inequality Lab at the Paris School of Economics. He is doing interesting work on profit accounting and determination. I would also note that Morgan attended the same secondary school (high school) as me in Dublin. Apparently, Christian Brothers College, Monkstown — although not a very prominent school in any meaningful sense — is creating a lot of heterodox...

"In fact, the realm of freedom actually begins only where labour which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production. Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilised man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production. With his development this realm of physical necessity expands...