Testing Labour Value Theory with input/output tables (original) (raw)
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A Selective Review of Recent Quantitative Empirical Research in Marxist Political Economy
This paper surveys some of the quantitative empirical research in two areas of Marxist political economy: (a) Marxist national accounts, and (b) Marxist responses to the Sraffa-based critique of the 1970s. With respect to the first area, this paper explains the basic methodology underlying the construction of Marxist national accounts from traditional input-output data. With respect to the second area, it offers a short review of the theoretical literature surrounding the Sraffa-based critique of the 1970s, and subsequently discusses three Marxist responses in detail: the standard interpretation, the probabilistic interpretation and the new interpretation. It explains the basic theoretical positions of these three approaches and reviews the quantitative empirical work conducted within each.
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In the paper, we develop the research results presented in the author's previous works: https://osf.io/tk43d/ and https://osf.io/8tyma/. Firstly, we tried to reveal the mechanism of formation of the general rate of surplus value in the pre-capitalist economy and to answer the question of why Marx called the value an abstraction but a historical abstraction. Secondly, we have shown that Paul Samuelson's so-called "Eraser algorithm" was justified erroneously. Samuelson's error is rooted in his confusion about two types of technological matrices: Leontief and Dmitriev, in his analysis of the numerical example of Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz. Third, we have identified that the basis of Jan Steedman's erroneous 'redundancy criticism' of value categories is the failure to understand the reality that the technological matrices he uses contain implicit value and distributional categories, i.e., a kind of "Trojan horse". Fourthly, we have drawn attention to the fact that economists in the contemporary debate on the utility of the labour theory of value overlook the fact that this theory is designed to justify market value prices in the transition period from capitalism to socialism. The paper reveals the first steps towards the justification of an appropriate economic mechanism based on market value prices. Marx; transformation problem; labour theory of value; P. Samuelson and I. Steedman's errors; the economic mechanism of the transition to socialism; taxation; market value prices JEL CODES B14; B16; B24; B51; D58; E11; P16 ... I could have turned Volume III into something better than it is. But I ... believe I have done my duty by presenting Marx in Marx's own words, even at the risk of expecting the reader to do rather more thinking for himself. F. Engels (Marx [1892-5] 2004, 460). 2 Marx formulated the problem somewhat differently because he did not assume that the law of value would still be valid after the formation of average profit. In Theories of surplus value, he wrote, "If one did not take the definition of value as the basis, the average profit, and therefore also the cost-prices, would be purely imaginary and untenable." (Marx 1968, 190).
Did Marx Have a Labour Theory of Value?
World Review of Political Economy, 2019
It has long been accepted that Marx was a follower of the labour theory of value. This position has recently been challenged by Harvey. This paper shows that the essential basis of Marx's value theory remained labour and that it did not differ substantially from that of Ricardo. It also references data showing the empirical validity of the theory and presents example data from the UK 1998 input output table showing how closely monetary output shadows labour content.
Labor Productivity and Marxist Theory of Labor Value
World Review of Political Economy, 2020
This article proves that the productivity defined rigorously within the Marxist theory of value is what economists use most of the time. When analyzing the changes in productivity of a country or the relationship between real wages and productivity or comparing the levels of productivity between countries, labor productivity is used and not, for example, multifactor productivity. In all three previous cases what legitimizes the use of labor productivity is the Marxist theory of value. We will see in the present article that, if productivity is defined as the reciprocal of the value of a basket of merchandises, the mathematical expressions commonly used in applied economics are deduced to understand the variations and levels of productivity and the link between that variable and the real wage. Since most non-Marxist economists reject Marxian theory of value, we conclude that, nonetheless, they use it without knowing it.
5 The Empirical Strength of the Labour Theory of Value
The purpose of this chapter is to explore the theoretical and empirical properties of what Ricardo and Smith called natural prices, and what Marx called prices of production. Classiml and Marxinn theories of competition argue two things about such prices. First, that the
CAFE Working Paper No. 21, 2023
This article examines the trajectory of the surplus value (SV) rate in the UK economy, in the period 1992–2020, using ONS macroeconomic data (Blue Book) and micro-datasets (Understanding Society). We initially define productive and unproductive labour, proposing a “Marxist Productive Labour Classification System”, framed in critical context. Standard occupational (SOC) and standard industrial (SIC) codes are uniquely combined, using UK data, to derive empirical estimates of Marxian categories, specifically an aggregate model based on the New Interpretation framework. Then, movements in this rate are examined in terms of absolute and relative SV changes. We find that, prior to the 2008 Crisis, SV extraction is more reliant on production-related drivers, while after this dislocation SV is more reliant on the sphere of distribution, with the pandemic impacting all drivers negatively.
Testing the Labour Theory of Value: An Exchange
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Political economists have been testing the empirical validity of Marx's labour theory of value for several decades now. Do these tests corroborate the theory? Do they actually test it? Can they test it?
Some reflections on the dependence of prices on Labour-Values
2010
Con frecuencia se cree, de una manera bastante esquizofrénica, que una teoría del valor solo debe resolver la cuestión de los "precios relativos" (un problema microeconómico), siendo principalmente la teoría del dinero de la pieza necesaria para la determinación monetaria o del nivel absoluto de los precios (un problema macroeconómico). Por una parte, la determinación del nivel de precios se encuentra teóricamente antes de cualquier consideración del mercado de dinero, mientras que por otro lado ninguna teoría del valor puede aspirar a ser completa sin la determinación del nivel absoluto de los valores. Se verá en este trabajo que sólo la teoría del valor trabajo (TVL) puede realizar ambas tareas, produciendo así la integridad y la unidad de la teoría económica. Palabras clave: teoría del valor trabajo, precios relativos, valores absolutos.