Robert Vienneau: Thoughts Economics

Figure 1: The Wage as Functions of Employment by Industry1.0 Introduction This post repeats a common theme of mine. It builds on an example I have previously gone on about. I use this example to graph, given the wage, the amount of labor firms would like to employ in each industry, per unit of gross output in each industry. These graphs are derived for an economy in which three commodities are produced: iron, steel, and corn. I also graph the amount of labor firms would like to employ...

[embedded content]Bob Murphy On InfinityBranko Milanovic on The unexpected immortality of Karl Marx. Jesse Walker, in Reason, on It's the end of the neoliberal era, and we still don't know what neoliberalism is.

Figure 1: The Wage Frontier for a Numeric Example Theorem: Consider a model of an economy in which n commodities are produced by means of commodities. Let Alpha be a technique in which each of the n commodities is produced by a fixed-coefficients, constant-returns-to-scale process. Suppose the Beta technique differs from Alpha only in the process operated in the nth industry. For simplicity, assume all n commodities are Sraffian basics in both techniques. Let both techniques undergo...

A number of years ago, I was in the subway station under Times Square in New York City. I must have looked lost, because this fellow came up to me and asked me where I was going. I said, "A bookstore, The Strand. I like to see what they have in their economics section. I am trying to decide if I should take the cross-town shuttle and go south from Grand Central." He said, "I am an economist myself. You can have this subway map." And he handed me a map of the tube in London. "This map...

To the common reader, the distinctions among old Keynesianism, new Keynesian, and Post Keynesianism might seem confusing. You might find these are political doctrines, with broad agreement among their followers. Governments should run deficits in periods of sustained unemployment. Maybe sometimes fiscal policy should be more emphasized over monetary policy. After all central banks cannot stimulate the economy by lowering interest rate when it is zero. In an inflationary period, central...

Carolina Alves Riccardo Bellofiore Scott Carter Ariel Dvoskin Steve Keen Stephanie Kelton Steve Marglin J. W. Mason Louis-Philippe Rochon Malcolm Sawyer Anwar Shaikh Matías Vernengo Graham White Ian Wright Suggestions for more? There are other feeds from scholars just starting out. One can also find mainstream economists on twitter who do not know that almost everything they say was shown to be, at best, wrong more than half a century ago. Updated 14 and 15...

Engels had a lot to do with formulating orthodox interpretations of Marx in the period after Marx's death. So it is interesting to see what he says. I have transcribed another letter before, about the law of value. The following is about historical materialism and the relation of the superstructure to the economic base: According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. Other than this...

1.0 Summary In A Single Sentence An analysis of structural economic dynamics in post-Sraffian models shows how reswitching and capital-reversing, for example, can be brought about or taken away by technical change, variation in relative markups among industries, or variations in requirements for use. 2.0 Descriptive Keywords Cambridge capital controversy Choice of technique Fixed capital Income distribution Joint production Labor market Leontief Input-Output models Markup...

[embedded content]Mirowski On Markomata In the title of this post, I introduce a new technical term. Consider a Leontief input-output matrix characterizing the technique in use, in physical terms. Suppose n industries are producing n commodities. If an alternative process is available in one industry, then a problem of the choice between two techniques arises. If two processes are available in each industry, the choice is among 2n techniques. If three processes are available in each...

The field of economics shouldn't exist, a video on Tik-Tok. A revived Christian Democracy as a Catholic alternative to neoliberalism. A article by Anothony Annett for Commonweal. The worldy turn, by Tom Bergen, for Aeon.