Relative mortality improvements as a marker of socio-economic inequality across the developing world, 1990-2009

Using cross country regressions, this paper constructs a novel distance-to-frontier metric for tracking broad socio-onomic inequality (including access of the poor to health infrastructure) over time for individual countries. Given the unavailability of reliable and consistent direct measures of inequality for most poor countries, especially related to non-income aspects of living standards, the metric developed in this paper can be used as an alternative indirect measure that is intuitive and easy to compute. To highlight its potential use, the metric is used to rank countries in terms of improvements in socio-economic inequality for the period since 1990. Notable examples of poor performance are displayed by China, Thailand, Kenya and India. JEL Categories: I14, O57, I32.life expectancy at birth, Preston regression, socio-economic inequality

Financialization, Household Credit and Economic Slowdown in the U.S.

Three important features of the U.S. economy during the neoliberal era since the mid-1970shave been: (a) growing financialization, (b) increasing household debt, and (c) stagnant real wages for production and nonsupervisory workers. This paper develops a discrete-time Marxian circuit of capital model to analyze the links between these three features and economic slowdown. The discrete-time model is used to address two important theoretical issues of general interest to the heterodox economic tradition: profit-led versus wage-led growth, and the growth-reducing impact of non-production credit. First, it is demonstrated that both profitled and wage-led growth regimes can be accommodated within the Marxian circuit of capital model. Second, it is demonstrated that the steady-state growth rate of a capitalist economy is negatively related to the share of consumption credit in total net credit, when the total credit is large to begin with. Bringing these two results together, the paper demonstrates that the three characteristics of the U.S economy under neoliberalism can have a growth-reducing impact on a capitalist economy. Hence, this paper oers a novel explanation, rooted in Marx’s analysis of the circuits of capital, of the slowdown of the U.S. economy during the neoliberal period.

Dynamics of Output and Employment in the U.S. Economy

This paper investigates the changing relationship between employment and real output in the U.S. economy from 1948 to 2010 both at the aggregate level and at some major industry-grouping levels of disaggregation. Real output is conventionally measured as value added corrected for price inflation, but there are some industries in which no independent measure of value added is possible and existing statistics depend on imputing value added to equal income. Indexes of output that exclude these imputations are closely correlated with employment over the whole period, and remain more closely correlated during the current business cycle. This analysis offers insights into deeper structural changes that have taken place in the U.S. economy over the past few decades in a context marked by the following three factors: (i) the service (especially the financial) sector has grown in importance, (ii) the economy has become more globalized, and (iii) the policy orientation has increasingly become neoliberal. We demonstrate an economically significant reduction in the coefficient relating employment growth to output growth over the business cycles since 1985. Some of this change is due to sectoral shifts toward services, but an important part of it reflects a reduction in the coefficient for the goods and material value-adding sectors.Okun's Law; Kaldor-Verdoorn Eect; Global restructuring; measurement of real output

Comparative growth dynamics in a discrete-time Marxian circuit of capital model

This paper develops a discrete-time formalization of the circuit of capital model presented by Marx in Volume II of Capital Marx (1993) as a tool for aggregate economic analysis of capitalist economies. The discrete-time formalization closely follows and extends the continuous-time formalization in Foley (1982, 1986a). The discrete-time model is used to address two important issues of interest to the heterodox economic tradition: profit-led versus wage-led growth, and the growth-reducing impact of non- production credit. First, it is demonstrated that both profit-led and wage-led growth regimes can be accommodated within the Marxian circuit of capital model. Second, it is demonstrated that the steady-state growth rate of a capitalist economy is negatively related to the share of consumption credit in total net credit, when the total credit is large to begin with

This paper uses aggregate-level data, as well as case-studies, to trace the evolution of some key structural features of the Indian economy, relating both to the agricultural and the informal industrial sector. These aggregate trends are used to infer: (a) the dominant relations of production under which the vast majority of the Indian working people labour, and (b) the predominant ways in which the surplus labour of the direct producers is appropriated by the dominant classes. This summary account is meant to inform and link up with on-going attempts at radically restructuring Indian society. JEL Categories: B24, B51

relations of production, modes of surplus extraction, India

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

Relations of Production and Modes of Surplus Extraction in India

This paper uses aggregate-level data, as well as case-studies, to trace out the evolution of some key structural features of the Indian economy, relating both to the agricultural and the informal industrial sector. These aggregate trends are used to infer: (a) the dominant relations of production under which the vast majority of the Indian working people labour, and (b) the predominant ways in which the surplus labour of the direct producers is appropriated by the dominant classes. This summary account is meant to inform and link up with on-going attempts at radically restructuring Indian society. JEL Categories: B24, B51relations of production, forms of surplus extraction, mode of production, India

Is there a tendency for the rate of profit to fall? Econometric evidence for the U.S. economy, 1948-2007

The law of the tendential fall in the rate of profit has been at the center of theoretical and empirical debates within Marxian political economy ever since the publication of Volume III of Capital. An important limitation of this literature is the absence of a comprehensive econometric analysis of the behaviour of the rate of profit. In this paper, we attempt to fill this lacuna in two ways. First, we investigate the time series properties of the profit rate series. The evidence suggests that the rate of profit behaves like a random walk and exhibits "long waves" interestingly correlated with major epochs of U.S. economic history. In the second part, we test Marx's law of the tendential fall in the rate of profit with a novel econometric model that explicitly accounts for the counter-tendencies. We find evidence of a long-run downward trend in the general profit rate for the US economy for the period 1948-2007. JEL Categories: B51, C22, E11falling rate of profit, Marxian political economy, time series analysis, unit roots.

Employment elasticity in India and the U.S., 1977 - 2011: A sectoral decomposition analysis

This paper analyses the phenomenon of jobless growth in India and the US through the lens of employment elasticity. Analytical results are derived for decompositions of both the level and change of aggregate employment elasticity in terms of sectoral elasticities, relative growth and employment shares. Estimates of these decompositions are presented with employment and output data from relevant sources for both economies. In India, the agricultural sector was the key determinant of both the level and change of aggregate elasticity till the early 2000s. In USA, services is the most important determinant of the level of, but manufacturing remains an important driver of changes in, aggregate employment elasticity

Profitability in India's organized manufacturing sector: The role of technology, distribution, and demand

Using aggregate data from the Annual Survey of Industries, we analyze profitability in India's organized manufacturing sector from 1982-83 to 2012-13. Over the whole period of analysis, the rate of profit grew at about 1 percent per annum, primarily driven by a rising share of profits. We use structural break tests to identify medium and short run regimes. We find two medium run regimes, one of declining profitability (1982-83 to 2001-02), and another of growing profitability (2001-02 to 2012-13). We find six short run regimes, of which only two are periods of rising profitability, 1987-88 to 1996-97, and 2001-02 to 2007-08. All other short run periods have witnessed declining profitability. Profit rate decomposition analysis shows that both in the medium and short run, technological factors have been the most important determinants of changes in profitability