Marx and the Big Mac: An Empirical Exploration of Marx’s Exploitation Theory for Introductory Economics Courses

Teresa Perry

Review of Radical Political Economics, 2025, vol. 57, issue 3, 403-410

Abstract: Undergraduate economics courses have low relevance, belonging, and growth mindset levels. For instance, Bayer et al. found that less than 30 percent of the students in their sample strongly agreed with the statement “The class gave me a useful framework for thinking about important issues.†Integrating pluralist methodologies into introductory economics classes may be one solution for overcoming this issue. This article introduces an empirical activity designed to teach students about Marx’s theory of exploitation. The activity utilizes the 10-K annual report from a publicly traded company, in this case, McDonald’s, to analyze the rate of exploitation of workers. Through this exercise, students delve into the theory of exploitation, analyze data from the 10-K, calculate the rate of exploitation, and engage in discussions about its application to contemporary social and political issues. JEL Classification: A22, P16, B24

Keywords: rate of exploitation; surplus value; Marx; teaching undergraduate economics; empirical activities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/04866134241284334 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:reorpe:v:57:y:2025:i:3:p:403-410

DOI: 10.1177/04866134241284334

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Review of Radical Political Economics from Union for Radical Political Economics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().