The sources of profitability

Peter Flaschel, Nils Fröhlich and Roberto Veneziani

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This paper is built around a theorem proved analytically and exemplified empirically in Flaschel, Franke and Veneziani (2010) which states that profitable capital-using labor-saving technical change is under mild conditions always reducing the labor content of commodities. This type of technical change therefore increases Marx’s value rate of profit in a systematic way. Against this background the paper studies the relationship between the actual value and price rate of profit and derives expressions that show that the deviation between them may be of a secondary and unsystematic nature. This result is then exemplified empirically using flow as well as stock matrix data for the German economy. The paper argues on this basis that prices of production are in fact of a questionable nature and an unnecessary detour in the input-output oriented analysis of the profitability nexus between total labor costs and the actual prices of the considered commodities.

Keywords: Labor values; profit rates; input-output models (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B51 C67 D46 D57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hme
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/30861/1/MPRA_paper_30861.pdf original version (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:pra:mprapa:30861

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().