Marx, the Production Function and the Old Neoclassical Equilibrium: Workable under the Same Assumptions? With an Appendix on the Likelihood of Reswitching and of Wicksell Effects

Bertram Schefold ()
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Bertram Schefold: Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main

No CSWP19, Centro Sraffa Working Papers from Centro di Ricerche e Documentazione "Piero Sraffa"

Abstract: A stochastic approach has been introduced to explain the empirically observed fact that wage curves calculated from input-output systems tend to be nearly linear and that the paradoxes of capital appear to be rare. The stochastic approach allows to justify the simplifying treatment of normal prices common to 19th and early 20th century authors as diverse as Marx (transformation problem), Wicksell (old neoclassical equilibrium), J.B. Clark (neoclassical production function). It is shown that the likelihood of reverse capital deepening is much lower than that of Wicksell effects. With this, the likely characteristics of the wage frontier obtained from a multiplicity of input-output tables are derived. The conclusion summarises what we know and do not know about the validity of the Cambridge critique of capital.

Keywords: Capital theory; Random matrices; Aggregate Production Function; Transformation problem; Wicksell effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B13 B14 E25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 57 pages
Date: 2016-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff, nep-hme, nep-mac and nep-pke
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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