The surplus approach to rent

La rente et l’approche en termes de surplus

Franklin Obeng-Odoom

Revue de la Régulation - Capitalisme, institutions, pouvoirs, 2021, vol. 31

Abstract: Theories of rent are wide-ranging. However, whether neoclassical, Marxist, or Proudhonist, they tend to neglect evolutionary institutionalist theorising. Increasingly dominated by the income approach, rent theories need to be expanded, partly to correct existing work, partly to break persistent intellectual monopoly and oligopoly, and particularly to develop institutional theories of rent. In this paper, I attempt to do so by presenting and evaluating the surplus approach to rent, particularly R.T. Ely’s, highlighting its power and potential and stressing its critiques and contradictions. Drawing, among others, on the original writings of Ely, it is argued that, while the emphasis on property rights, land as a ‘bundle of sticks’, and rent as surplus rather than income help to advance heterodox approaches to rent, the surplus approach is severely limited in its analysis of inequalities and how they can be addressed, especially in extractivist and rentier societies. To unravel long-term inequalities that characterise rent and rentier economies, it is crucial for surplus theorists to engage stratification economics which, in turn, can drive the surplus approach to rent.

Keywords: rent; Inequality; Institutionalism; Land; Political Economy; Richard Theodore Ely; rente; inégalité; institutionnalisme; foncier; économie politique; Richard Theodore Ely; rentas; desigualdad; institucionalismo; economia política; Richard Theodore Ely (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O19 P48 Q24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.openedition.org/regulation/20460 (text/html)
https://journals.openedition.org/regulation/pdf/20460 (application/pdf)

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:rvr:journl:2021:20460

DOI: 10.4000/regulation.20460

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Revue de la Régulation - Capitalisme, institutions, pouvoirs from Association Recherche et Régulation
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Pascal Seppecher ().