Paul Zarembka

Transformation of Variables in Econometrics

Economic theory usually fails to describe the functional relationship between variables (the CES production function being an exception). In econometrics, implications of simplistic choice of functional form include the danger of misspecification and its attendant biases in assessing magnitudes of effects and statistical significance of results, It is safe to say that when functional form is specified in a restrictive manner a priori before estimation, most empirical results that have been debated in the professional literature would have had a modified, even opposite, conclusion if the functional relationship had not been restrictive (see Zarembka, 1968, p. 509, for an illustration; also, Spitzer, 1976).

Capital Heterogeneity, Aggregation, and the Two-Sector Model

I. Consistent aggregation of a multisectoral economy to a two-sector model, 106. — II. The Sato technology frontier, 110. — III. The neoclassical model, 111. — IV. Implications and extensions, 112. — Appendix: a simple empirical test for reswitching, 114.

Materialized Composition of Capital and its Stability in the United States

The materialized composition of capital, a concept needing more attention, helps to correctly understand the value or organic composition that Marx discussed. For theoretical clarity, it is actually preferable. Evidence from frequently utilized data indicates that the materialized composition in the United States has been stable since 1956 at a level around two. Changes in the value or oft-cited organic composition of capital have, therefore, been limited to changes in the rate of surplus value.

Value: Marx’s Evolution and Luxemburg’s Legacy

In his work on value, Marx began in 1847 by recognising economic categories as socially determined and only later introduced abstract labour as a concept. ‘Labour power’ followed even later, along with value as the substance of exchange-value yet distinct from it. Meanwhile, the assumption of a fully capitalist mode of production is made in Capital. This assumption blemishes accumulation of capital as it needs to be understood to include continuing penetration of non-capitalist modes, a concept at the heart of Luxemburg’s legacy in political economy. Since Luxemburg’s work in political economy articulates a problem in Marx’s work, would the conception of value be ‘contaminated’ were we to open it to include the implications of continuing destruction of non-capitalist modes of production?

Marxist Political Economy without Hegel: Contrasting Marx and Luxemburg with Plekhanov and Lenin

No one contests the early influence of Hegel on Marx. Yet some act as if Hegel was to be always important for Marx. Furthermore, certain popular renderings even use a simplistic caricature of Hegel such as the thesis-antithesis-synthesis formulary and, taking that to belong to Marx as well, attack Marx through caricature. Meanwhile, the question is infrequently posed whether Hegel’s influence persisted for Marx, and if Marx himself, as his work deepened, defended the necessity of Hegel’s philosophy for his political economy. We shall demonstrate, with considerable evidence from Marx himself, the declining need for Hegelian philosophy in Marx’s evolving understanding of political economy.

Marxism, Conspiracy, and 9–11

We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and every where in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate. To violate this combination is every where a most unpopular action, and a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbours and equals. We seldom, indeed, hear of this combination, because it is the usual, and one may say, the natural state of things which nobody ever hears of. Masters too sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labour even below this rate. These are always conducted with the utmost silence and secrecy, till the moment of execution, and when the workmen yield, as they sometimes do, without resistance, though severely felt by them, they are never heard of by other people. Such combinations, however, are frequently resisted by a contrary defensive combination of the workmen; who sometimes too, without any provocation of this kind, combine of their own accord to raise the price of their labour . . .