Factor Prices under Monopoly

Revisiting Rothbardian monopoly price theory and extending it to the realm of factor pricing, this paper explains how grants of privileges to capitalists can lower labor and land factors' prices compared to what would prevail in a free market environment. Monopolistic grants to capitalists make for situations where both monopoly of demand for factors and monopoly of supply for their products are inextricably intertwined. Combined with established considerations regarding inelasticity of demand for the monopolized product, its impact on substitutes and the interdependence of factor markets, we show how they can trigger an overall downward pressure on original factor prices.monopoly; factor prices; labor; capitalists; interventionism; monopsony; monopoly price; income distribution; privileges; Mises; Rothbard; Machlup; Wieser; Marx

Factor Prices under Monopoly

Revisiting Rothbardian monopoly price theory and extending it to the realm of factor pricing, this paper explains how grants of privileges to capitalists can lower labor and land factors\u27 prices compared to what would prevail in a free market environment. Monopolistic grants to capitalists make for situations where both monopoly of demand for factors and monopoly of supply for their products are inextricably intertwined. Combined with established considerations regarding inelasticity of demand for the monopolized product, its impact on substitutes and the interdependence of factor markets, we show how they can trigger an overall downward pressure on original factor prices

Comparative Advantage and Uncertainty Bearing

The law of association as espoused by David Ricardo and generalized by Ludwig von Mises cannot directly convey what is at stake in exchanges involving specialization in uncertainty bearing. In this article we explain why the entrepreneurial function as conceptualized by Frank Knight and Mises does not fit in, and what other rationale for association is involved whenever specialization in uncertainty bearing takes place. We also explain how this other raison d’être of association is related to the Ricardian/Misesian law of association and how these insights can be combined to produce a more realistic picture of the market process. We show how specialization in uncertainty bearing, though itself escaping the law of comparative advantage, indirectly but decisively allows for an intensification of the Ricardian division of labor

A Note on the Limits to Monopoly Pricing

Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard tended to emphasize the same requirement for a monopoly price to emerge, as far as the demand schedule for the monopolized good is concerned, in the long run and in the immediate run. This is problematic because, as this paper explains, their criterion of a seller or a cartel of sellers facing an “inelastic demand” above the “competitive price” (Mises) or the “free-market price” (Rothbard) is only required in the immediate run. This has consequences in regard to the question of the limits to monopoly pricing. The inelasticity of demand criterion of both authors left less room for monopoly prices in their theoretical constructs of a hampered market economy than there really is. If one wants to spare the bulk of consumers from the effects of factor misallocation, refraining from granting monopolistic privileges becomes even more urgent than what both authors suggested

Determination of the globular cluster and halo stellar mass functions and stellar and brown dwarf densities

We use recent low-mass star models, which reproduce accurately the observed sequences of various globular clusters, to convert the observed luminosity functions into bolometric luminosity functions and mass functions down to the bottom of the main sequence. These mass functions are well describedby a slowly rising power-law $dN/dm\propto m^{-\alpha}$, with 0.5\wig < \alpha \wig < 1.5, down to \sim 0.1 \msol, independently of the metallicity, suggesting a rather universal behaviour of the cluster initial mass functions. We predict luminosity functions in the NICMOS filters in the stellar and in the brown dwarf domains for different mass functions and metallicities. We apply these calculations to the determination, slope and normalization, of the mass function of the Galactic halo (spheroid and dark halo). The spheroid mass function is well described by the afore-mentioned power-law function with $\alpha \sim 1.7\pm 0.2$ down to 0.1 \msol, although a slowly decreasing mass function below \sim 0.15 \msol can not be excluded with the data presently available. Comparison with the Hubble Deep Field star counts is consistent with such a mass function and excludes a significant stellar population in the dark halo. Consistent analysis with recent microlensing experiments towards the LMC shows that the spheroid and the dark-halo stellar+brown dwarf populations represent at most $\sim$ 1% of the Galactic dark matter density. This clearly excludes brown dwarfs and low-mass stars as significant dark matter candidates.Comment: 14 pages, Latex file, uses l-aa.sty, To appear in Astronomy and Astrophysic

Contribution of brown dwarfs and white dwarfs to recent microlensing observations and to the halo mass budget

We examine the recent results of the MACHO collaboration towards the Large Magellanic Cloud (Alcock et al. 1996) in terms of a halo brown dwarf or white dwarf population. The possibility for most of the microlensing events to be due to brown dwarfs is totally excluded by large-scale kinematic properties. The white dwarf scenario is examined in details in the context of the most recent white dwarf cooling theory (Segretain et al. 1994) which includes explicitely the extra source of energy due to carbon-oxygen differentiation at crystallization, and the subsequent Debye cooling. We show that the observational constraints arising from the luminosity function of high-velocity white dwarfs in the solar neighborhood and from the recent HST deep field counts are consistent with a white dwarf contribution to the halo missing mass as large as 50 %, provided i) an IMF strongly peaked around 1.7 Msol and ii) a halo age older than 18 Gyr.Comment: 14 pages, 2 Postscript figures, to be published in Astrophysical Journal Letters, minor revision in tex

Földbirtokreform és tetanus

Die Verfasser Untersuchten die Möglichkeit ciner Vermehrung der Tetanuserkrankungen im Zusammenhange mit dem in Ungarn durchgeführten Agrarreforme. Als Ausgangsputikt diente die Feststellung der Statistik von Bakay und Klimkó (1928-31), dass natnlich die Ilaufung der Erkrankungen denjcnigen Komitaten zuifallt, welche nur in geringer Zalil inittlere und grössere Güter enthalten. Da doch die Verbreitung des Tetanus vor allem von der Vielizucht und vöm Ausmasse der intensiven Landwirtschaft neben den Bodenverhaltnissen abhangig ist, so ware nach dün Verfassern zu erwarten, dass in denjenigen Qebieten, welche in Folge des Agrarreformes auf kleine und kleinste Besitztümer aufgeteilt wurden, die Zahl der Tetanuserkrankungen deutlich zunehmen wird. Um dieser Gefahr vorzubeugem emplehlen die Verfasser die Einführung der aktiven Immunisierung der Agrarbevölkerung. SUMMARY: The authors have examined the possibility of increase of tetanus morbidity in connection with the newly installated agricultural reform. Thy start from the appointment of the collective statistical study of Bakay and Klimkó (1928-31) saying that tetanus has been found the most frequent in departments of the country containing a small number of landed properties of greater and middler size. As occurretice of tetanus is chiefly related to the level of cattlebreeding and intensive agriculture besides of character of the ground, it is to be expecied that morbidity rate will increase in those districts which have been divided in to many small and smallest properties. To avoid this danger the authors are recommending introduction of active immunisation for defending population of these threatened areas

Low mass T Tauri and young brown dwarf candidates in the Chamaeleon II dark cloud found by DENIS

We define a sample designed to select low-mass T Tauri stars and young brown dwarfs using DENIS data in the Chamaeleon II molecular cloud. We use a star count method to construct an extinction map of the Chamaeleon II cloud. We select our low-mass T Tauri star and young brown dwarf candidates by their strong infrared colour excess in the I-J/J-K_s colour-colour dereddened diagram. We retain only objects with colours I-J>2, and spatially distributed in groups around the cloud cores. This provides a sample of 70 stars of which 4 are previously known T Tauri stars. We have carefully checked the reliability of all these objects by visual inspection on the DENIS images. Thanks to the association of the optical I-band to the infra-red J and K_s bands in DENIS, we can apply this selection method to all star formation regions observed in the southern hemisphere. We also identify six DENIS sources with X-ray sources detected by ROSAT. Assuming that they are reliable low-mass candidates and using the evolutionary models for low-mass stars, we estimate the age of these sources between 1 Myr and < 10 Myr.Comment: 7 Pages, including 3 PostScript figures. Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysic