Robert Vienneau: Thoughts Economics

Figure 1: The Production Possibility Frontier, With And Without Trade, In "Germany"1.0 Introduction This post presents a numeric example of a Ricardian model of small, open economies engaged in trade. Each of three countries specializes in producing one of three commodities. Technology is modeled following an Austrian approach. Each commodity can be produced in each country from inputs of labor and "capital". Endowments of labor are taken as given parameters. It makes no sense to take the...

A couple of months ago, I read Anthony Trollope's novel, The Way We Live Now. Even though the novel was written and set in England in 1870, I consider this post to be about contemporary American politics. Are any of the characters in the novel sympathetic? Maybe Lady Carbury, to a certain extent, and her cousin Roger Carbury. But I want to focus on Augustus Melmotte. Melmotte is successful in business, but is initially considered vulgar by elite socialites in London. His business...

1.0 Introduction Yoshihara and Kwak (henceforth YK) presented a paper, on Sraffian indeterminacy, at the last annual meeting for the American Economic Society. I want to register my qualified disagreement. 2.0 Yoshihara and Kwak against Mandler YK are arguing against Michael Mandler. In a 1999 paper, a book, and a series of papers since, Mandler has been criticizing Sraffa and his followers. In Mandler's reading, Sraffa argues that, in neoclassical theory, the distribution of income is...

Many - not all - of my recent numerical examples have a certain abstract pattern: At the start of the time under consideration, one technique is uniquely cost minimizing, for all feasible rates of profits. Coefficients of production decline or some markups over the normal rate of profits vary. A fluke switch point appears. Switch points move along the wage frontier, and interesting phenomena occur. These can be other fluke switch points. Reswitching, the recurrence of techniques,...

Recurrence Of Techniques Without Switch Points I have built on my previous post in a writeup: Abstract: In certain models of commodities produced by means of commodities, the choice of technique is analyzed by the construction of the wage frontier. This article presents a numeric example of a continuum of wage curves tangent at a switch point. Technological progress leads to the recurrence of techniques. No switch points then exist, but the cost-minimizing technique varies continuously...

Here are three books I have read: Paul Ormerod (1994). The Death of Economics. St. Marin's Press. Stanley Wong (1978, 2006). Foundations of Paul Samuelson's Revealed Preference Theory: A Study by the Method of Rational Reconstruction. Routledge J. E. Woods (1990). The Production of Commodities: An Introduction to Sraffa. Humanities Press. These authors have two things in common. All three were critical of some aspects of mainstream economics. And they all ended up in business. Looking at...

Figure 1: Switch Points Varying with Time1.0 Introduction This post presents a perturbation of a fluke switch point. At this switch point, the wage curves for four techniques are tangent. In the jargon I have been inventing, this is another four-technique, local pattern. In other words, a perturbation of appropriately selected parameters - for example, coefficients of production - changes the sequence of wage curves and switch points on the wage frontier. The perturbation can be viewed as...

I have been looking at patterns of switch points. A pattern is a configuration of switch points helpful for perturbation analysis for the choice of technique. I am curious how the switch points and the wage curves along the wage frontier can alter with parameters, in a model of the production of commodities. Such a parameter can be a coefficient of production; time, where a number of parameters are functions of time; or the markup in an industry or a number of industries. A normal form...

Figure 1: Variation in Switch Points with the Markup in the Iron Industry1.0 Introduction I finally use the tools of pattern analysis that I have been inventing to tell a practical story. I build on the example which I began in my previous post. Workers would be better off if an increase in wages led to greater employment, not less. A long-period change in relative markups among industries can result in firms in some industries obtaining a greater rate of profits at the expense of firms...

Figure 1: The Wage Frontier at a Four-Technique Patterns1.0 Introduction This post presents another numerical example of one technique replacing another, along the wage frontier, with a perturbation of a model parameter. In a previous post, I identified three sequences of patterns of switch points in which the wage curves for one technique replaces the wage curve of another. In one of these sequences, a three-technique pattern removes the middle technique from three techniques with wage...