Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Basic theoretical foundations
- 3 Marxian categories and national accounts: Money value flows
- 4 Marxian categories and national accounts: Labor value calculations
- 5 Empirical estimates of Marxian categories
- 6 A critical analysis of previous empirical studies
- 7 Summary and conclusions
- Appendices
- References
- Author index
- Subject index
5 - Empirical estimates of Marxian categories
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 February 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Basic theoretical foundations
- 3 Marxian categories and national accounts: Money value flows
- 4 Marxian categories and national accounts: Labor value calculations
- 5 Empirical estimates of Marxian categories
- 6 A critical analysis of previous empirical studies
- 7 Summary and conclusions
- Appendices
- References
- Author index
- Subject index
Summary
Our empirical analysis of the U.S. economy will be set out in several sections. Sections 5.1 and 5.2 will utilize suitably modified input–output tables to develop benchmark year estimates of Marxian measures of the total, intermediate, and final product, and then use NIPA data to interpolate between benchmark estimates to create an annual series for each of these measures. Sections 5.3 and 5.4 develop the estimates of annual employment, wages, variable capital V*, surplus value S*, surplus product SP*, and the rate of surplus value S*/V*, and compare them to the more conventional measures such as profit-type income and the profit/wage ratio. Section 5.5 measures the Marxian rate of profit, and compares it with the average observed rate (net of those parts of surplus value which are absorbed into nonproduction expenses) and the observed corporate rate. Section 5.6 measures the rate of exploitation of unproductive workers, and compares it to that of productive labor; Section 5.7 compares Marxian and conventional measures of productivity. Sections 5.8 and 5.9 examine the impact of the state on accumulation, through its absorption of surplus value and through the effects of taxes and social expenditures on the rate of surplus value. Section 5.10 examines the effects of price–value deviations on aggregate Marxian measures, and Section 5.11 develops a technique that allows us to approximate the rate of surplus value in a relatively simple manner.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Measuring the Wealth of NationsThe Political Economy of National Accounts, pp. 89 - 151Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994