On measuring the wealth of nations: the US economy, 1964–2001

Mohun, Simon

doi:10.1093/cje/bei043

Cited by 37 publications

(33 citation statements)

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“…The aim of Marxian national accounts is to generate estimates of the total value produced in an economy over a period of time, as also its component parts—constant capital, variable capital and surplus value. There is a long tradition that has attempted this task, including Mage (), Wolff (), Moseley (), Shaikh and Tonak (), Mohun (), Olsen () and Paitaridis and Tsoulfidis (). In this paper, I will focus my comments on the ground‐breaking work of Shaikh and Tonak (), which is, in a sense, a culmination of the previous literature on this issue and also the most comprehensive work to date .…”

Section: Marxian National Accountsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantitative Empirical Research in Marxist Political Economy: A Selective Review

Basu

2017

Journal of Economic Surveys

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This paper surveys quantitative empirical research in some key areas of Marxist political economy. Following an introductory section on the value controversy, the paper surveys quantitative empirical research on the following topics: (a) Marxist national accounts, (b) classical‐Marxist theory of relative prices, (c) probabilistic political economy, (d) profitability analysis and (e) classical‐Marxian theories of growth and technical change. I end by highlighting two important puzzles in the extant literature.

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Section: Marxian National Accountsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantitative Empirical Research in Marxist Political Economy: A Selective Review

Basu

2017

Journal of Economic Surveys

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“…The notion of productive-unproductive labour is prominent in classical analysis as it is intrinsically connected to the process of economic growth and stagnation; nevertheless it remains a contentious issue and its usefulness is often debated (Foley 1986;Wolff 1987;Shaikh and Tonak 1994;Cockshott, Cottrell, and Michaelson 1995;Moseley 1997;Duménil and Lévy 2004;Mohun 2005Mohun , 2006. According to classical analysis, productive labour is the labour that is activated in the sphere of production, where capital hires labour and purchases non-labour inputs in order to produce more value than the value of inputs used.…”

Section: Unproductive Labour and Capital Accumulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unproductive labour, capital accumulation and profitability crisis in the Greek economy

Tsoulfidis

Tsaliki

2014

International Review of Applied Economics

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The focus of this paper is on the evolution of the major macroeconomic variables of classical political economy and the contrast with their orthodox counterparts in the quest to identify the causes of the current crisis in the Greek economy. Our analysis shows that declining profitability past a certain point leads to a stagnant mass of real net profits that discourage investment and increase unemployment. More specifically, for the period 1970-2007 for which we have detailed data, we identify the so-called silent depression of the 1970s and early 1980s, the new golden age of accumulation during which the capitalization of the production process led to a rapidly growing productivity and with stagnant or slowly rising real wages increased the rate of surplus value to new heights. As a consequence, the rate of profit from the mid-1980s onwards displayed a mildly rising trend and remained at a much lower level than that of the early 1970s. The rate of profit starts to fall after 2007, the year of the onset of the (world) economic crisis, and this continues up to 2014. Our econometric analysis based on an ARDL model further shows that the incremental rate of return, a variable derived from, and therefore strictly related to the average rate of profit, constitutes a by far more concrete measure of profitability and, in combination with the real interest rate, shapes the process of capital accumulation.

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“…2 Shaikh and Tonak's findings are broadly consistent with other research on this issue. Mohun (2005) provides an in-depth discussion of Shaikh and Tonak's methodology for estimating productive and unproductive labor, and applies a modified version of it to a new data set for the 1964-2001 period. He finds the unproductive share of total U.S. employment from 1964-1989 to be very close to Shaikh and Tonak's estimates, and also finds that while there was a brief trend reversal in the early 1990s, the unproductive share returned to its 1989 level by 2001.…”

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confidence: 99%

Unproductive Activity and Endogenous Technological Change in a Marxian Model of Economic Reproduction and Growth

Olsen

2014

Review of Radical Political Economics

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This paper integrates unproductive activity into a Marxist growth model based on Marx's reproduction schemes. Labor extraction and technological change are related to the production and distribution of surplus and thus are endogenous. Unproductive labor is shown to have potentially contradictory effects. It can squeeze profits and reduce growth or increase work intensity and develop productivity enhancing technological change, which increase profitability and growth. Empirical evidence indicates that both effects occurred in the postwar United States. Marx's reproduction schemes are also shown to rely on a classical growth dynamic in which the profit and savings rates determine the rate of growth.The traditional Marxist theories of short-period cyclical and long-period secular dynamics can be grouped into three basic types: theories based on a tendency of the rate of profit to fall, underconsumptionist theories, and profit squeeze theories. While each provides insight into the dynamics of a capitalist economy, none of them, as currently understood, are very useful when trying to understand the consequences of the growth in unproductive labor in the United States over the last century. Studies of the U.S. economy consistently find increasing levels of unproductive employment, and there is evidence that this is true for other developed capitalist countries as well. But this issue has yet to be integrated into Marxist theories of capitalist dynamics and has received little formal treatment. The relative lack of theoretical work on this issue makes it difficult to consider its causes or consequences and limits the explanatory power of Marxian theory for contemporary issues. With that in mind the purpose of this paper is to develop a Marxist

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On measuring the wealth of nations: the US economy, 1964–2001

Cited by 37 publications

References 1 publication

Quantitative Empirical Research in Marxist Political Economy: A Selective Review

Quantitative Empirical Research in Marxist Political Economy: A Selective Review

Unproductive labour, capital accumulation and profitability crisis in the Greek economy

Unproductive Activity and Endogenous Technological Change in a Marxian Model of Economic Reproduction and Growth

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