Post-Keynesian

Over years, I have considered how Marx continues and differs from classical political economy. I have also documented some foreshadowings and outlines of the transformation problem. This is another letter in a series In this letter, Marx alludes to prices of production and the transformation problem. Apparently, he thinks at this time that volumes 2 and 3 will be a single volume. Here he sets out three points which he thinks are original to the first volume of Capital. The first is that...

Figure 1: Variation of Switch Points with Technological Progress in Industry This post is an expansion on this post. Technological progress in industry, in which the machine is produced, can be illustrated in Figure 1 in the previous post by a movement roughly from off the graph to the upper right to below the lower left. More concretely, suppose each of the two non-zero coefficients of production in the machine industry decrease at a constant rate of σ0 and σ1 respectively. The two...

[embedded content]On Another Topic, with an Appearance by Rutger Bregman. This post does not answer the question, but merely provides a bibliography. I have not read everything below. I suppose this is something of a hodge podge. I include a book from Peter Kropotkin, even though it is much older than the remaining non-fiction works, since I am currently one third, maybe, through it. Novels (Ken Macleod, in The Cassini Division has a more complete list as chapter titles.) Edward Bellamy....

This is another letter in a series I have been transcribing in which Marx discusses Capital. In this letter, he says one of the two best points in his book is his discussion of labor expressed in use value or in exchange value. Since I have not read (an english edition of) the first edition, I cannot be sure of my ground here. Apparently, Marx revised Chapter 1 quite extensively among editions. Anyways, I think this expression of labor gets at the distinction between concrete and abstract...

Figure 1: A Part of the Parameter Space1.0 Introduction This post presents a perturbation of an example from Salvatore Baldone. It follows the style of some posts that almost add up to a draft research paper. A widespread view among Austrian-school and mainstream economists is mistaken. Given competitive markets, if the supply of capital were increased, in some sense, the rate of profits would supposedly be driven down. At the level of abstraction here, no distinction exists between the...

An old puzzle is why do those who build on Leontief's empirical work not make more of Sraffa? And why do those who build on Sraffa's theory not interact more with those building on Leontief? Sraffa implicitly refers to Leontief, von Neumann, and others in the preface to his 1960 book. Those, like Zambelli, that have done empirical work on capital-theoretical 'paradoxes' draw on Leontief matrices constructed from national income and product accounts. So do those who are exploring empirical...

The strongest argument against socialism, understood as entailing central planning, comes from Enrico Barone. Von Mises popularized this argument. Maybe he was subjectively original. I think von Mises did not have a good understanding of duality theory and shadow prices. Anyways, his argument is supposed to be an argument in principle, an impossibility argument. Oskar Lange, Abba Lerner, and Fred Taylor, for example, provided answers. Hayek proposed a revision emphasizing practicality and...

Suppose one rejects the labor theory of value as a theory of prices. Or, even more, one could reject Marx's theory of value in volume 1 of Capital. Still, one could elaborate the theory of prices of production. In my published works, I have tried to extend the theory a step or two. And the theory of prices of production is opposed to a marginalist theory, a theory of supply and demand, if any such coherent theory exists. In this post, I offer one explanation of the setting of the theory...

This is another letter in a series I have been transcribing in which Marx explains his theory to Engels. In 1867, he was going through the proofs of Capital and so penned several such letters. I think one can ignore Hegel and read Marx as presenting a scientific theory, from abstract principles to more concrete applications. I would not necessarily disagree with those who think such a reading misses much. But I find it interesting how much this reading captures. I like that in this...

I find that I summarized the Ellsberg paradox back in 2009. I have also commented on who in the United States was prosecuted for leaking classified information to the press. Eric Loomis has an obituary. The Pentagon Papers are now unclassified and available from the National Archives. As I understand it, Ellsberg copied each page personally - no downloading to a thumb drive in his day. David Halberstam's book, The Best and the Brighest is a well-known work of journalism (the first draft of...