Robert Vienneau: Thoughts Economics

Neoliberals are hostile to labor unions and every other institution that would allow the vast majority of the population to have some effect on how we are ruled. And they have been so successful that only the super-rich can save us, as the title of a Ralph Nader novel a few years back had it. A couple of recent examples of journalism are about movements of the super-rich: Sheelah Kolhatkar writes, in the New Yorker, about Patriotic Millionaires. Theodore Schleifer writes, in Vox, about...

I have a new working paper. Abstract: Does the Cambridge equation, in which the rate of profits in a steady state is equal to the quotient of the rate of growth and the savings rate out of profits, hold in an economy with widespread non-competitive markets? This article presents a multiple-good model of markup pricing in an attempt to answer this question. A balance equation is derived. Given competitive conditions, this model can be used to derive the Cambridge equation. The Cambridge...

Figure 1: Real Factor Price Frontier1.0 Introduction Carlo Milana has proposed a new way of visualizing the choice of technique, including in the case of reswitching. This way of describing what he has done is not neccessarily how he thinks of it. In this post, I describe his approach with a reswitching example, in a model of the production of commodities by means of commodities. 2.0 Technology Table 1 shows the coefficients of production for this example. Coefficients of production...

"The University [of Chicago] is the best investment I ever made in my life." -- John D. Rockefeller Consider the following people and selected activities: Lewis Brown founded the American Enterprise Institute, in 1938. Jasper Crane cofounded the Foundation for Economic Education, in 1946. Leonard Read cofounded the Foundation for Economic Education, in 1946. Harold Luhnow, even before 1947, directed spending for the Volker Fund. Sir Antony Fisher funded the Institute for Economic...

[embedded content]Elizabeth Warren Echoing A View Institutionalists Understand This year, the "Nobel prize" in economics went to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer. They champion empirical economics over theory. Previously, institutionalist economics was described as 'theory without measurement' (Koopmans 1947). Does institutionalist economics parallel the supposed mainstream empirical turn? Although institutionalists, as far as I know, did not have the resources to...

Figure 1: A Switch Point and a Fake Switch Point on Wage Curves1.0 Introduction In the analysis of the choice of technique, I typically consider examples of technology with a finite number of techniques. For each technique, I find the wage as a function of the rate of profits. The outer envelope of these curves shows the cost-minimizing technique at each rate of profits (or each level of the wage). Points on more than one wage curve are switch points. This approach is valid when, for...

As far as I am concerned, cost-push inflation is a manifestation of class conflict between workers and owners. In the late 1970s, Paul Volker and Ronald Reagan took the side of the owners. I am willing to accept that Volker genuinely believed in Milton Friedman's incorrect quantity theory of money. And, since then, workers have been getting a smaller share in increased productivity. Some obituaries of Paul Volker exhibit an understanding of what he did. But I want to talk about my...

1.0 Introduction I have sometimes set out Marx's model of expanded reproduction, only with prices of production instead of labor values. I assume two goods, a capital good and a consumption good, are produced with constant technology. If one assumes workers spend all their wages and capitalists save a constant proportion of profits, one can derive the Cambridge equation in this model. The Cambridge equation shows that, along a steady state growth path, the economy-wide rate of profits is...

David Graeber's review of Robert Skidelsky's Money and Government: The past and Future of Government. A TED talk, by Nick Hanauer, on how complexity economics is replacing "neoliberal" economics. He is especially interested in reciprocity. A 2014 interview by Bill Moyers, of Paul Krugman, on Piketty's book. Mariana Mazzucato, with a talk on the value of everything. She also has a 2013 TED talk. Heinz Kurz on the Cambridge capital controversy. Bertram Schefold on the CCC and his recent...

A considerable body of literature has been published, during the last century, arguing that a movement away from competitive markets must be recognized in trying to describe and understanding contemporary capitalism. The literature I am thinking of emphasizes big business, corporations, and finance. Here are some selections, not all of which I have read: Rudolf Hilferding (1910). Finance Capital: A study of the latest phase of capitalist development. Adolfe A. Berle and Means (1932). The...