Adolfo Rodriguez-Herrera | Universidad de Costa Rica (original) (raw)

Papers by Adolfo Rodriguez-Herrera

RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, 2018

This paper reviews one of the mechanisms with which capital weaves a new type of subjection of th... more This paper reviews one of the mechanisms with which capital weaves a new type of subjection of the human being, the production of needs. Unlike other living beings, whose needs are determined by their biology, human beings are the fruit of the social relations that they establish within their culture. Humans need objects, but their needs arise through the objects called to satisfy them, objects that in capitalist society are capital –value in process of valorisation. In this way, need is itself a product of capital, and capital thus appears as a force that imposes itself on the human being from within, not only in the labour process but in the very constitution of the human needing being. The article discusses the triple human condition that gives rise to this phenomenon –the objective being (the need for the object), the being of desire (the need beyond the object) and the object's being (the need as product of object)– and concludes that capitalist market, that civilizing force that gives rise to the modern, autonomous individual, reduces freedom to a simple means of capital valorisation.

Dialogue and universalism, 2018

This paper reviews one of the mechanisms with which capital weaves a new type of subjection of th... more This paper reviews one of the mechanisms with which capital weaves a new type of subjection of the human being, the production of needs. Unlike other living beings, whose needs are determined by their biology, human beings are the fruit of the social relations that they establish within their culture. Humans need objects, but their needs arise through the objects called to satisfy them, objects that in capitalist society are capital –value in process of valorisation. In this way, need is itself a product of capital, and capital thus appears as a force that imposes itself on the human being from within, not only in the labour process but in the very constitution of the human needing being. The article discusses the triple human condition that gives rise to this phenomenon –the objective being (the need for the object), the being of desire (the need beyond the object) and the object's being (the need as product of object)– and concludes that capitalist market, that civilizing force that gives rise to the modern, autonomous individual, reduces freedom to a simple means of capital valorisation.

RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, 2021

In Marx’s texts we can recognize three positions on the concept of productive labor, arising from... more In Marx’s texts we can recognize three positions on the concept of productive labor, arising from his critique of Smith. These positions are incompatible with each other when considering the labor that provides personal services, of growing importance in contemporary capitalism. A return to the foundations of Marx’s theory of value is necessary to understand the concept of productive labor and to decipher one of the main determinants of value transfers between sectors and regions and of the ever-increasing inequality.

In Marx’s texts we can recognize three positions on the concept of productive labor, arising fro... more In Marx’s texts we can recognize three positions on the concept of productive
labor, arising from his critique of Smith. These positions are incompatible with each other
when considering the labor that provides personal services, of growing importance in
contemporary capitalism. A return to the foundations of Marx’s theory of value is
necessary to understand the concept of productive labor and to decipher one of the main
determinants of value transfers between sectors and regions and of the ever-increasing
inequality.

Este texto hace una exposición detallada del concepto marxista de tiempo de trabajo socialmente n... more Este texto hace una exposición detallada del concepto marxista de tiempo de trabajo socialmente necesario y de su papel en la determinación del valor. Con ese concepto Marx dilucida la relación cuantitativa entre la cantidad total de trabajo consumido en la producción de un cierto tipo de valor de uso y el valor de cada unidad de ese tipo de valor de uso. Se trata de un concepto indispensable para explicar cómo el trabajo se transforma en valor y simultáneamente el valor en precio, y para concebir la determinación de valores y precios como resultado simultáneo de la producción y la circulación. Con él, además, Marx resuelve las dificultades que la heterogeneidad del trabajo representa para Smith en la formulación de su teoría del valor-trabajo. El texto analiza con detalle los diferentes determinantes del tiempo de trabajo socialmente necesario y realiza una presentación algebraica para el cálculo de valores y precios que muestra la validez de los procedimientos de Marx y sus resultados. 3 Smith se refiere al concepto de valor con el término 'real price'; el término 'value' es usado por él como una abreviación de 'exchange value'.

Unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, Université Catholique …, 1994

Selon l’auteur, le soi-disant débat sur le problème de la transformation des valeurs en prix a li... more Selon l’auteur, le soi-disant débat sur le problème de la transformation des valeurs en prix a lieu parce que les partisans et les adversaires de Marx n'ont pas perçu la rupture de Marx avec Ricardo et ont adopté un concept de valeur, proposé par Tugan Baranowsky et Bortkiewicz, qui ne peut même pas être assimilé à celui de Ricardo. Le livre montre la stérilité paradoxale de tout le débat qui prétend résoudre un problème qui n'a jamais existé. Le livre fournit une exposition complète et méticuleuse de la théorie de la valeur de Marx qui souligne son actualité et pertinence pour comprendre les phénomènes actuels d'inégalité croissante, en partie causés par le transfert massif de valeur de certaines régions vers d'autres.

Serie Estudios y Perspectivas, CEPAL, 2006

La banca es posiblemente el sector económico más regulado por el Estado, aun cuando tal regulació... more La banca es posiblemente el sector económico más regulado por el Estado, aun cuando tal regulación no siempre ha tenido entre sus ejes la promoción de la competencia. Por el contrario, algunas de las disposiciones de Basilea parecieran inducir la concentración de mercado. No obstante, aunque la aplicación de los indicadores tradicionales de concentración a la industria bancaria revela que ésta es elevada en algunos de los países de la región, no es menos cierto que se trata de un sector bastante expuesto a la competencia: en particular, el desarrollo de las tecnologías de información, que ha dado lugar a una contestabilidad creciente para la banca de la región en lo que se refiere tanto a la captación como a la colocación de recursos. De hecho, gran parte del dinamismo y de las transformaciones experimentadas por la banca centroamericana en estos años provienen de las estrategias instrumentadas para hacer frente a esas fuentes externas de contestabilidad.
En este documento se expone el escenario y el conjunto de factores determinantes de las estrategias competitivas de la banca en la región, a fin de analizar las estrategias con que los grupos bancarios están respondiendo a las exigencias de la aplicación de las normas de Basilea y enfrentando la creciente internacionalización de la industria. Entre dichas estrategias se encuentran: a) un proceso de modernización y racionalización de sus actividades; b) el desarrollo de bancos offshore al lado de los domiciliados localmente; c) una activa política de fusiones y adquisiciones que ha reducido el número de bancos y aumentado los indicadores de concentración; d) la regionalización de las actividades y de la propiedad de los grupos financieros, y e) una creciente incursión en actividades financiera antes vedadas para los bancos. A pesar del éxito con que algunos grupos bancarios han desarrollado estas estrategias, lo cierto es que están encarando una serie de limitaciones —relacionadas en su mayoría con políticas públicas—, que reducen su competitividad frente a la banca extranjera y que en definitiva repercuten negativamente sobre el consumidor.

in Freeman and Carchedi (editors) Marx and Non-equilibrium Economics, Edward Elgar, UK, 1996. ISBN 1-85898-268-5 , 1996

Thanks to a Ricardian concept of the magnitude of value, the participants in the controversy on t... more Thanks to a Ricardian concept of the magnitude of value, the participants in the controversy on the transformation of values into prices can separate the capitalist economy into two different spheres, price and value. This is a procedure completely foreign to Marx. The main consequence of this separation is the misunderstanding of the money form of value, a problem that arises in two ways. Firstly, money is a commodity like all others and there is thus an essentially contradictory relationship between its value and its exchange value, that is between its value and the expression of this value in the use-value of another commodity. This contradiction is neglected in the controversy, and therefore money becomes a simple numeraire, exactly as in the Ricardian and Walrasian traditions. Second, two juxtaposed standards of price are allowed to co-exist -one in the sphere of values and the other in the sphere of prices- whose relationship constitutes the only external link between the two ...

Aristotle versus Marx: Modes of Use, Use Value or Useful Object?, 2014

In the first three pages of his Capital, without any warning to the reader, Marx introduces a mod... more In the first three pages of his Capital, without any warning to the reader, Marx introduces a modification of the traditional meaning of the term “use value”. For Locke, Quesnay, and Smith, “use value” was the ability of a thing to satisfy human needs, for Marx it becomes the thing itself. This change of meaning has not been properly perceived, and many authors continue to attribute to Marx the same conception of use value than his predecessors have. When Marx translates some passages of Aristotle’s Politics from English to German, his translation surprisingly attributes the term “use value” to Aristotle; worse, Marx does not attribute to Aristotle the predominant meaning of this term but the new meaning adopted by him. This note offers a brief history of the term “use value”, summarizes the significant change of meaning introduced by Marx, conjectures about the possible motivations of Marx to act this way, and finally documents the amazing translation of Marx.

The author presents what is for him the originality of the marxist theory of value. This theory e... more The author presents what is for him the originality of the marxist theory of value. This theory explains how the class struggle for the distribution of wealth appears in the capitalist society and how this struggle is solved. It is the question common to all the Political Economics, and its main object. The basic difference between Ricardo, Marx and neoclassical theory concern mainly the answers they give to this same question. These answers are determinated by the condition of class struggle of their time and participate to this last. The main originality of Marx’s answer is to reveal the inherent contradictions of the wealth distribution and to show that the capitalist form to solve these contradictions brings the society to the dissolution of relations between classes and individuals and the transformation of the of way of live.

Este trabajo tiene dos objetivos complementarios. Por una parte, evaluar a partir de las ultimas ... more Este trabajo tiene dos objetivos complementarios. Por una parte, evaluar a partir de las ultimas encuestas de hogares como ha evolucionado el uso de los servicios de salud por parte de los diferentes grupos de ingreso. Con esto se pretende indagar hasta que punto se ha revertido la tendencia hacia la segmentacion del sistema publico de salud, lo cual fue uno de los objetivos de la reforma de la atencion primaria implementada en los anos noventa. Por otra parte, realizar una proyeccion del uso de los servicios de salud en los proximos 40 anos, con el fin de alertar sobre las consecuencias que la transicion demografica puede tener sobre la viabilidad financiera del modelo de salud costarricense.

The terminology employed by Smith to refer to value and measure of value is used in his time with... more The terminology employed by Smith to refer to value and measure of value is used in his time with imprecision, which has led to different interpretations about his position on these issues. It is no coincidence that Smith is considered the father of the labour theory of value developed by David Ricardo and Karl Marx and simultaneously of the cost-of-production theory of value developed by John Stuart Mill and Alfred Marshall. This paper reviews the concepts developed by Smith to formulate his theory of value –value, real price and exchangeable value– and the criticism made by Ricardo and Marx on Smith’s position about the role of labour as measure of value. According to these authors, Smith is not consistent in proposing that the value of a commodity is defined or measured as the amount of labour necessary to produce it and simultaneously as the amount of labour that can be purchased by this commodity. After demonstrating that the interpretation made by Ricardo and Marx on Smith’s a...

Research Papers in Economics, 1994

The purpose of this article is to propose a systematic reading of the transformation procedure il... more The purpose of this article is to propose a systematic reading of the transformation procedure illustrated by Marx in the first example of Chapter 9, Capital III, with an effort to convey the non dualistic vision he has of the economy. The article shows that Marx’s texts on the transformation have a radically different meaning than that attributed to them by Bortkiewicz and other authors, and establishes the soundness of Marx’s conclusions. Moreover, the passages where Marx tests the validity of his results are carefully examinated. To do this, we follow an observation made by Marx himself which has been completely neglected in the subsequent literature.

La firme dans la tradition néoclassique, 1990

As a theoretical object and as an economic agent, the firm has been ignored by contemporary theor... more As a theoretical object and as an economic agent, the firm has been ignored by contemporary theory. This is the result of the reorientation of interests which took place with the marginalist revolution. In the Walrasian tradition, it has no raison d’etre. In the Marshallian tradition, its emergence is justified, but there is still hardly any attention paid to its role in the allocation of resources and the coordination of markets. This paper reviews the main currents in neo-classical theory of the firm. In COASE’s framework, the emergence of the firm is explained by the existence of transaction costs, while from ALCHAIN and DEMSETZ’s point of view, increasing returns to scale are the main element. Other possible neo-classical explanations of the firm are briefly discussed. None of these explanations, however, is consistent with general equilibrium theory, and none gives the firm anything live the major role it deserves in economic thinking.

Resumen Este articulo presenta de manera sistematica los diferentes factores que determinan los c... more Resumen Este articulo presenta de manera sistematica los diferentes factores que determinan los costos de la transicion inherentes a una reforma estructural de los sistemas previsionales, y busca demostrar que, dado el valor presente del flujo de beneficios, no existe ninguna diferencia cuantitativa entre los costos de establecer un esquema de capitalizacion individual y los costos de dotar de pleno financiamiento a un esquema de beneficio definido. La sostenibilidad del sistema no depende de que se escoja un esquema u otro, sino del esfuerzo financiero que el Estado y en general la sociedad esten dispuestos a hacer para asumir los costos de la transicion. El primer capitulo examina el origen del ahorro actuarial producido por la reforma, asi como los costos fiscales implicados en su implantacion y los factores que determinan la magnitud de dichos costos. El segundo capitulo examina sinteticamente la experiencia latinoamericana en materia de costos de transicion. El tercero, finalme...

Resumen La viabilidad economica de un sistema de pensiones, asi como tambien su prestigio y legit... more Resumen La viabilidad economica de un sistema de pensiones, asi como tambien su prestigio y legitimidad politica, dependen en buena medida de su capacidad para cubrir efectivamente a la poblacion objetivo, a costos socialmente aceptables. Precisamente este ultimo aspecto ha sido uno de los puntos en discusion acerca de los meritos relativos de diferentes disenos institucionales de un sistema de pensiones. En este documento se exploran alternativas orientadas a mejorar la eficiencia del sistema de pensiones, a la luz de la experiencia de Costa Rica y de varios otros paises, tanto dentro como fuera de la region. Para tales efectos se examinan alternativas de organizacion de los principales procesos que conforman la administracion de un sistema de pensiones: la afiliacion, la recaudacion y control contributivo, la gestion de las inversiones y de las prestaciones. En cada caso el objetivo es establecer los incentivos que conlleva cada tipo de organizacion y su efecto mas probable sobre ...

Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), en el marco de las actividades del proyecto "Desarrollo y Equidad Soc... more Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), en el marco de las actividades del proyecto "Desarrollo y Equidad Social en América Latina y el Caribe" (GER/01/031), ejecutado por CEPAL en conjunto con la Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ). El autor desea agradecer el apoyo

RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, 2018

This paper reviews one of the mechanisms with which capital weaves a new type of subjection of th... more This paper reviews one of the mechanisms with which capital weaves a new type of subjection of the human being, the production of needs. Unlike other living beings, whose needs are determined by their biology, human beings are the fruit of the social relations that they establish within their culture. Humans need objects, but their needs arise through the objects called to satisfy them, objects that in capitalist society are capital –value in process of valorisation. In this way, need is itself a product of capital, and capital thus appears as a force that imposes itself on the human being from within, not only in the labour process but in the very constitution of the human needing being. The article discusses the triple human condition that gives rise to this phenomenon –the objective being (the need for the object), the being of desire (the need beyond the object) and the object's being (the need as product of object)– and concludes that capitalist market, that civilizing force that gives rise to the modern, autonomous individual, reduces freedom to a simple means of capital valorisation.

Dialogue and universalism, 2018

This paper reviews one of the mechanisms with which capital weaves a new type of subjection of th... more This paper reviews one of the mechanisms with which capital weaves a new type of subjection of the human being, the production of needs. Unlike other living beings, whose needs are determined by their biology, human beings are the fruit of the social relations that they establish within their culture. Humans need objects, but their needs arise through the objects called to satisfy them, objects that in capitalist society are capital –value in process of valorisation. In this way, need is itself a product of capital, and capital thus appears as a force that imposes itself on the human being from within, not only in the labour process but in the very constitution of the human needing being. The article discusses the triple human condition that gives rise to this phenomenon –the objective being (the need for the object), the being of desire (the need beyond the object) and the object's being (the need as product of object)– and concludes that capitalist market, that civilizing force that gives rise to the modern, autonomous individual, reduces freedom to a simple means of capital valorisation.

RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, 2021

In Marx’s texts we can recognize three positions on the concept of productive labor, arising from... more In Marx’s texts we can recognize three positions on the concept of productive labor, arising from his critique of Smith. These positions are incompatible with each other when considering the labor that provides personal services, of growing importance in contemporary capitalism. A return to the foundations of Marx’s theory of value is necessary to understand the concept of productive labor and to decipher one of the main determinants of value transfers between sectors and regions and of the ever-increasing inequality.

In Marx’s texts we can recognize three positions on the concept of productive labor, arising fro... more In Marx’s texts we can recognize three positions on the concept of productive
labor, arising from his critique of Smith. These positions are incompatible with each other
when considering the labor that provides personal services, of growing importance in
contemporary capitalism. A return to the foundations of Marx’s theory of value is
necessary to understand the concept of productive labor and to decipher one of the main
determinants of value transfers between sectors and regions and of the ever-increasing
inequality.

Este texto hace una exposición detallada del concepto marxista de tiempo de trabajo socialmente n... more Este texto hace una exposición detallada del concepto marxista de tiempo de trabajo socialmente necesario y de su papel en la determinación del valor. Con ese concepto Marx dilucida la relación cuantitativa entre la cantidad total de trabajo consumido en la producción de un cierto tipo de valor de uso y el valor de cada unidad de ese tipo de valor de uso. Se trata de un concepto indispensable para explicar cómo el trabajo se transforma en valor y simultáneamente el valor en precio, y para concebir la determinación de valores y precios como resultado simultáneo de la producción y la circulación. Con él, además, Marx resuelve las dificultades que la heterogeneidad del trabajo representa para Smith en la formulación de su teoría del valor-trabajo. El texto analiza con detalle los diferentes determinantes del tiempo de trabajo socialmente necesario y realiza una presentación algebraica para el cálculo de valores y precios que muestra la validez de los procedimientos de Marx y sus resultados. 3 Smith se refiere al concepto de valor con el término 'real price'; el término 'value' es usado por él como una abreviación de 'exchange value'.

Unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, Université Catholique …, 1994

Selon l’auteur, le soi-disant débat sur le problème de la transformation des valeurs en prix a li... more Selon l’auteur, le soi-disant débat sur le problème de la transformation des valeurs en prix a lieu parce que les partisans et les adversaires de Marx n'ont pas perçu la rupture de Marx avec Ricardo et ont adopté un concept de valeur, proposé par Tugan Baranowsky et Bortkiewicz, qui ne peut même pas être assimilé à celui de Ricardo. Le livre montre la stérilité paradoxale de tout le débat qui prétend résoudre un problème qui n'a jamais existé. Le livre fournit une exposition complète et méticuleuse de la théorie de la valeur de Marx qui souligne son actualité et pertinence pour comprendre les phénomènes actuels d'inégalité croissante, en partie causés par le transfert massif de valeur de certaines régions vers d'autres.

Serie Estudios y Perspectivas, CEPAL, 2006

La banca es posiblemente el sector económico más regulado por el Estado, aun cuando tal regulació... more La banca es posiblemente el sector económico más regulado por el Estado, aun cuando tal regulación no siempre ha tenido entre sus ejes la promoción de la competencia. Por el contrario, algunas de las disposiciones de Basilea parecieran inducir la concentración de mercado. No obstante, aunque la aplicación de los indicadores tradicionales de concentración a la industria bancaria revela que ésta es elevada en algunos de los países de la región, no es menos cierto que se trata de un sector bastante expuesto a la competencia: en particular, el desarrollo de las tecnologías de información, que ha dado lugar a una contestabilidad creciente para la banca de la región en lo que se refiere tanto a la captación como a la colocación de recursos. De hecho, gran parte del dinamismo y de las transformaciones experimentadas por la banca centroamericana en estos años provienen de las estrategias instrumentadas para hacer frente a esas fuentes externas de contestabilidad.
En este documento se expone el escenario y el conjunto de factores determinantes de las estrategias competitivas de la banca en la región, a fin de analizar las estrategias con que los grupos bancarios están respondiendo a las exigencias de la aplicación de las normas de Basilea y enfrentando la creciente internacionalización de la industria. Entre dichas estrategias se encuentran: a) un proceso de modernización y racionalización de sus actividades; b) el desarrollo de bancos offshore al lado de los domiciliados localmente; c) una activa política de fusiones y adquisiciones que ha reducido el número de bancos y aumentado los indicadores de concentración; d) la regionalización de las actividades y de la propiedad de los grupos financieros, y e) una creciente incursión en actividades financiera antes vedadas para los bancos. A pesar del éxito con que algunos grupos bancarios han desarrollado estas estrategias, lo cierto es que están encarando una serie de limitaciones —relacionadas en su mayoría con políticas públicas—, que reducen su competitividad frente a la banca extranjera y que en definitiva repercuten negativamente sobre el consumidor.

in Freeman and Carchedi (editors) Marx and Non-equilibrium Economics, Edward Elgar, UK, 1996. ISBN 1-85898-268-5 , 1996

Thanks to a Ricardian concept of the magnitude of value, the participants in the controversy on t... more Thanks to a Ricardian concept of the magnitude of value, the participants in the controversy on the transformation of values into prices can separate the capitalist economy into two different spheres, price and value. This is a procedure completely foreign to Marx. The main consequence of this separation is the misunderstanding of the money form of value, a problem that arises in two ways. Firstly, money is a commodity like all others and there is thus an essentially contradictory relationship between its value and its exchange value, that is between its value and the expression of this value in the use-value of another commodity. This contradiction is neglected in the controversy, and therefore money becomes a simple numeraire, exactly as in the Ricardian and Walrasian traditions. Second, two juxtaposed standards of price are allowed to co-exist -one in the sphere of values and the other in the sphere of prices- whose relationship constitutes the only external link between the two ...

Aristotle versus Marx: Modes of Use, Use Value or Useful Object?, 2014

In the first three pages of his Capital, without any warning to the reader, Marx introduces a mod... more In the first three pages of his Capital, without any warning to the reader, Marx introduces a modification of the traditional meaning of the term “use value”. For Locke, Quesnay, and Smith, “use value” was the ability of a thing to satisfy human needs, for Marx it becomes the thing itself. This change of meaning has not been properly perceived, and many authors continue to attribute to Marx the same conception of use value than his predecessors have. When Marx translates some passages of Aristotle’s Politics from English to German, his translation surprisingly attributes the term “use value” to Aristotle; worse, Marx does not attribute to Aristotle the predominant meaning of this term but the new meaning adopted by him. This note offers a brief history of the term “use value”, summarizes the significant change of meaning introduced by Marx, conjectures about the possible motivations of Marx to act this way, and finally documents the amazing translation of Marx.

The author presents what is for him the originality of the marxist theory of value. This theory e... more The author presents what is for him the originality of the marxist theory of value. This theory explains how the class struggle for the distribution of wealth appears in the capitalist society and how this struggle is solved. It is the question common to all the Political Economics, and its main object. The basic difference between Ricardo, Marx and neoclassical theory concern mainly the answers they give to this same question. These answers are determinated by the condition of class struggle of their time and participate to this last. The main originality of Marx’s answer is to reveal the inherent contradictions of the wealth distribution and to show that the capitalist form to solve these contradictions brings the society to the dissolution of relations between classes and individuals and the transformation of the of way of live.

Este trabajo tiene dos objetivos complementarios. Por una parte, evaluar a partir de las ultimas ... more Este trabajo tiene dos objetivos complementarios. Por una parte, evaluar a partir de las ultimas encuestas de hogares como ha evolucionado el uso de los servicios de salud por parte de los diferentes grupos de ingreso. Con esto se pretende indagar hasta que punto se ha revertido la tendencia hacia la segmentacion del sistema publico de salud, lo cual fue uno de los objetivos de la reforma de la atencion primaria implementada en los anos noventa. Por otra parte, realizar una proyeccion del uso de los servicios de salud en los proximos 40 anos, con el fin de alertar sobre las consecuencias que la transicion demografica puede tener sobre la viabilidad financiera del modelo de salud costarricense.

The terminology employed by Smith to refer to value and measure of value is used in his time with... more The terminology employed by Smith to refer to value and measure of value is used in his time with imprecision, which has led to different interpretations about his position on these issues. It is no coincidence that Smith is considered the father of the labour theory of value developed by David Ricardo and Karl Marx and simultaneously of the cost-of-production theory of value developed by John Stuart Mill and Alfred Marshall. This paper reviews the concepts developed by Smith to formulate his theory of value –value, real price and exchangeable value– and the criticism made by Ricardo and Marx on Smith’s position about the role of labour as measure of value. According to these authors, Smith is not consistent in proposing that the value of a commodity is defined or measured as the amount of labour necessary to produce it and simultaneously as the amount of labour that can be purchased by this commodity. After demonstrating that the interpretation made by Ricardo and Marx on Smith’s a...

Research Papers in Economics, 1994

The purpose of this article is to propose a systematic reading of the transformation procedure il... more The purpose of this article is to propose a systematic reading of the transformation procedure illustrated by Marx in the first example of Chapter 9, Capital III, with an effort to convey the non dualistic vision he has of the economy. The article shows that Marx’s texts on the transformation have a radically different meaning than that attributed to them by Bortkiewicz and other authors, and establishes the soundness of Marx’s conclusions. Moreover, the passages where Marx tests the validity of his results are carefully examinated. To do this, we follow an observation made by Marx himself which has been completely neglected in the subsequent literature.

La firme dans la tradition néoclassique, 1990

As a theoretical object and as an economic agent, the firm has been ignored by contemporary theor... more As a theoretical object and as an economic agent, the firm has been ignored by contemporary theory. This is the result of the reorientation of interests which took place with the marginalist revolution. In the Walrasian tradition, it has no raison d’etre. In the Marshallian tradition, its emergence is justified, but there is still hardly any attention paid to its role in the allocation of resources and the coordination of markets. This paper reviews the main currents in neo-classical theory of the firm. In COASE’s framework, the emergence of the firm is explained by the existence of transaction costs, while from ALCHAIN and DEMSETZ’s point of view, increasing returns to scale are the main element. Other possible neo-classical explanations of the firm are briefly discussed. None of these explanations, however, is consistent with general equilibrium theory, and none gives the firm anything live the major role it deserves in economic thinking.

Resumen Este articulo presenta de manera sistematica los diferentes factores que determinan los c... more Resumen Este articulo presenta de manera sistematica los diferentes factores que determinan los costos de la transicion inherentes a una reforma estructural de los sistemas previsionales, y busca demostrar que, dado el valor presente del flujo de beneficios, no existe ninguna diferencia cuantitativa entre los costos de establecer un esquema de capitalizacion individual y los costos de dotar de pleno financiamiento a un esquema de beneficio definido. La sostenibilidad del sistema no depende de que se escoja un esquema u otro, sino del esfuerzo financiero que el Estado y en general la sociedad esten dispuestos a hacer para asumir los costos de la transicion. El primer capitulo examina el origen del ahorro actuarial producido por la reforma, asi como los costos fiscales implicados en su implantacion y los factores que determinan la magnitud de dichos costos. El segundo capitulo examina sinteticamente la experiencia latinoamericana en materia de costos de transicion. El tercero, finalme...

Resumen La viabilidad economica de un sistema de pensiones, asi como tambien su prestigio y legit... more Resumen La viabilidad economica de un sistema de pensiones, asi como tambien su prestigio y legitimidad politica, dependen en buena medida de su capacidad para cubrir efectivamente a la poblacion objetivo, a costos socialmente aceptables. Precisamente este ultimo aspecto ha sido uno de los puntos en discusion acerca de los meritos relativos de diferentes disenos institucionales de un sistema de pensiones. En este documento se exploran alternativas orientadas a mejorar la eficiencia del sistema de pensiones, a la luz de la experiencia de Costa Rica y de varios otros paises, tanto dentro como fuera de la region. Para tales efectos se examinan alternativas de organizacion de los principales procesos que conforman la administracion de un sistema de pensiones: la afiliacion, la recaudacion y control contributivo, la gestion de las inversiones y de las prestaciones. En cada caso el objetivo es establecer los incentivos que conlleva cada tipo de organizacion y su efecto mas probable sobre ...

Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), en el marco de las actividades del proyecto "Desarrollo y Equidad Soc... more Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), en el marco de las actividades del proyecto "Desarrollo y Equidad Social en América Latina y el Caribe" (GER/01/031), ejecutado por CEPAL en conjunto con la Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ). El autor desea agradecer el apoyo

Rousseau, Smith, Marx. Reflexiones sobre la riqueza y la renuncia, 2022

El paper contratista las reflexiones en torno a la riqueza y la renuncia de tres autores muy infl... more El paper contratista las reflexiones en torno a la riqueza y la renuncia de tres autores muy influyentes en el pensamiento económico: Jean Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith y Karl Marx. Cierra, además, con una reflexión sobre tres casos que ilustran la tesis central que se destaca en los tres autores: que la acumulación de riqueza no es conlleva la abundancia sino por lo contrario acumulación de pobreza: el caso de salud, tratado por Iván Ilich, el de la sociedad del cansancio, tratado por Byung-Chul Han, y el del consumo de carne, tratado por Matthew Ricard.