Post-Keynesian

I have sometimes written retrospectives about my research program. I have been exploring the results of perturbing parameters in models of the choice of technique. This is a bit more prospective. Illustrations of One-Dimension Pattern Diagrams: I have a selection of these written up. Independence of Economic Life of Machines and Capital-Intensity: I have the analytical results I want. I am being slow to read what I need to connect results up to Austrian capital theory. I have had a much...

This is more of my commonplace book, based on reading some of Hayek's The Pure Theory of Capital. Hayek rejects Böhm Bawerk's average period of production, a single number summarizing the capital intensity of a structure of production. He still strives to say that more capital-intensive techniques are longer in some non-aggregate sense. I probably will not finish this book. To compare and contrast this book with J. R. Hicks' Value and Capital would be of interest. Hayek correctly takes...

1.0 Introduction I do not think I have presented an introductory example in a while in which an increased wage is associated with firms wanting to employ more labor, given the level of net output. This example is presented as a matter of accounting for a vertically integrated firm. Exact calculations with rational numbers are tedious in this example. I expect that if anybody bothers to check this, they would use a spreadsheet. As far as I can tell, Microsoft Excel uses double precision...

Marx, in Theories of Surplus Value, quotes James Stuart writing about 'profit upon alienation'. When one sells a good one owns, one has alienated it from oneself. In the typical work relation under capitalism, the managers of firms, that is, the representatives of capitalists, sell the product or services that workers produce. Workers do not own the goods they produce, for they have previously sold their labor-power. That is, they have agreed that their product is not owned by themselves,...

A revolution occurred in price theory about two-thirds of a century ago. Several scholars independently developed components of this revolution. This post merely lists selected literature. I have previously tried to briefly describe why some of these authors are precursors. Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz (1907) On the correction of Marx's fundamental theoretical construction i the third volume of Capital. Translated and reprinted by Sweezy. David G. Champernowne (1945-1946) A note on J. V....

Prof. Rowena Ball teaches a course on indigenous mathematics at Australian National University. Prof. Caroline Fohlin, an economics professor at Emory University, is arrested for being assaulted by rioting police. Prof. Tim Garrett questions the units of measurement in aggregate production functions. Aggregate production functions are not laws of nature, and those not in a broken discipline should not be thrown by questions about units of measurement. Maybe some production functions make...

Every child knows a nation which ceased to work, I will not say for a year, but even for a few weeks, would perish. Every child knows, too, that the masses of products corresponding to the different needs required different and quantitatively determined masses of the total labor of society. That this necessity of the distribution of social labor in definite proportions cannot possibly be done away with by a particular form of social production but can only change the mode of its appearance...

1.0 Introduction Economists of the Austrian school generally retain some concept that lower interest rates incentivize capitalists or entrepreneurs to adopt more lengthy production processes, in some sense, while still rejecting aggregate physical measures of roundaboutness or capital intensity. This post collects some quotations of economists of the Austrian school or Austrian-adjacent saying such or saying something confused about the Cambridge Capital Controversy. I want to recall this...

Figure 1: The Wage-Rate of Profits Frontier1.0 Introduction This post completes a demonstration that the economic life of a machine is independent of the capital-intensity of a technique. I here fill in the upper right of a two-by-two table. I have previously filled in the upper-left and lower right entries. And I also have an example for the lower left. 2.0 Technology Tables 1 and 2 present coefficients of production for processes which can be combined to produce a new output of corn....

I have previously repeated some transcriptions from the correspondence Marx and Engels. I tried to concentrate on some formulations from Engels of ideas important in Marxism, Marx stating what is important and novel in Capital, or outlines of the project, particularly concentrating on the so-called transformation problem. This long letter certainly belongs in this collection. Marx's ideas were fairly well-developed in 1858. Here he has promised Duncker, a publisher, to write what...