Tag Archives: Sraffa Effects

These posts demonstrate, in a model of fixed capital, that the cost-minimizing choice of the economic life of a machine need not conform to traditional Austrian and marginalist theory. The cost-minimizing choice of technique around a switch point might associate a shorter economic life of a machine with an increased capital intensity. This counter-intuitive variation of the economic life of a machine is independent of capital reversing and the re-switching of techniques, both of which are...

Figure 1: Wage Curves and Rent for an Example of Intensive Rent This post is a continuation of a previous example. This is a fluke case insofar as the Alpha and Delta wage curves intersect at the scale factor for the rate of profits that is the maximum possible for the Epsilon technique. This fluke case is associated with a qualitative change in the range of the scale factor for the rate of profits in which no cost-minimizing technique exists. The technology, endowments, requirements...

Figure 1: Variation of Technique with Relative Markups1.0 Introduction This is a rewrite of a previous post with somewhat 'nicer' values for coefficients of production. I also expand on it with some observations on absolute rent. As far as I know, these posts are the first explicit presentation in the post-Sraffian tradition of a model of the prices of production with extensive rent and markup pricing. These posts explore the conflict over distribution among workers, capitalists, and...

Figure 1: Variation of Technique with Relative Markups "That 'diminishing returns' was not an essential element in the surplus-based theory emerged in Marx's criticisms of Ricardo. Sraffa (1960), in his short chapter on land, the implications of which have yet to be developed, shows how the classical view of rents need not necessarily rest on the conception of 'the law of diminishing returns' or need not suggest necessarily any functional relationship between output and cost, or even presume...

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...

Figure 1: A Part of a Parameter Space This post revisits my numerical examples in which I demonstrate the possibility of the reswitching of the order of fertility and of the reswitching of the order of rentability. Each of those posts presents a numeric example. In each, different ranges of the coefficients of production a0,2 and a1,2 are considered. This post combines those ranges, while still not considering the full parameter space, even for the slice for these coefficients. In the...

Figure 1: Wage and Rent Curves for a Numeric Example1.0 Introduction This post continues, with some repitition, my exposition of a model of extensive and intensive rent. In the example, the cost-minimizing technique is non-unique at a low enough wage or rate of profits. One cost-minimizing technique, Epsilon, illustrates a case of extensive rent. The other cost-minimizing technique, Iota, illustrates a case with both extensive and intensive rent. In this technique, a kind of absolute rent...

Figure 1: Wage Curves and Rent for an Example of Extensive Rent I more-or-less have a draft research article in five posts: post 1 post 2 post 3 post 4 post 5. I suggest that the current post can replace the fourth post. It is a variant on on this post. The analysis of the choice of technique in models of extensive rent can be based on the construction of wage curves, even though the outer envelope does not represent the cost-minimizing technique. The orders of fertility and rentability...

The logical possibility of the reswitching of techniques is a devastating challenge to marginalism. But the Cambridge capital controversy does not depend on the presence of reswitching. I suppose I should have links for the possibilities listed below. None of these possibilities are fluke cases. One might make a distinction between the reswitching of techniques and the recurrence of techniques. In both cases a technique is cost-minimizing at two non-overlapping ranges of the wage. If...

Figure 1: An Example of the Reswitching of the Order of Fertility1.0 Introduction Nobody has ever pointed out the possibility highlighted by this post, as far as I know. This post can be contrasted with this one. Talk of "switch points" and "reswitching" for the wage curves on the left pane in Figure 1 above is, arguably, an abuse of terminology. Quantity flows do not change around the switch points. The same lands are fully farmed, and the same land that is partially farmed has the same...