THE MARGINAL PRODUCTIVITY THEORY OF INCOME DISTRIBUTION – OR YOU’RE WORTH WHAT YOU CAN GET

2022 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Income Distribution ◽  
Marginal Productivity ◽  
Productivity Theory

scholarly journals Are Widing Labour Market Earnings Differentials Entirely/Partly/Not at all Economically Rational/Justified/Inevitable?

1970 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prue Hyman
Keyword(s):  
Income Distribution ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Wage Determination ◽  
Transfer System ◽  
Marginal Productivity ◽  
Earnings Differentials ◽  
Market Income ◽  
Inherited Wealth ◽  
Productivity Theory ◽  
Objectively Measured

Discussion of changes to income distribution and inequality 1984/1998 has focused more on tax/transfer/ social policies than rewards in the labour market. Yet the tax/transfer system is comparatively minor in effects relative to the wide market income distribution from the labour market and other sources (inherited wealth, dividends, rents etc.). Hence this paper asks whether labour market differentials need to be as wide as they are, why they are widening, and whether the economic justifications are real or resemble an emperor with no clothes. It discusses the standard neoclassical analyses of wage determination and differentials in the labour market and their limitations. Issues include whether marginal productivity theory is simply a circular trick, whether imperfections are inevitable in labour markets, and whether skills/productivity can be objectively measured. Consideration is given to institutional and feminist analyses. The paper concludes that earnings differentials within the standard economy are inequitably wide, counterproductive, and only tenuously related to productivity issues.

Adolphe Landry's Theory of Profits

2012 ◽  
pp. 125-140
Author(s):  
Heinz D. Kurz
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Critical Assessment ◽  
Marginal Productivity ◽  
Productivity Theory

The paper provides a critical assessment of Adolphe Landry's contributions to the theory of capital and interest. His analysis represents one among several variants of marginal productivity theory. The distinguishing feature of his variant is that he considers entrepreneurship a scarce factor of production alongside with the usual factors labour, land and capital. He thus tries to put entrepreneurship - the innovative agens, as Schumpeter saw it - into the Procrustean bed of marginalist theory. It is not clear whether Landry's combination of various ideas to be found in the contemporary literature generates a coherent whole, because his argument is often suggestive and vague and lacks analytical rigour.

Technological Effects on Wages and Labour: Classical and Neoclassical Ideas

2012 ◽  
pp. 97-124
Author(s):  
Anastassios D. Karayiannis ◽  
Ioannis A. Katselidis
Keyword(s):  
Technological Progress ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Marginal Productivity ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Rate Effects ◽  
Short Run ◽  
Real Wage Rate ◽  
Productivity Theory ◽  
The One ◽  
The 19Th Century

The introduction of new technology may have significant effects on the level of employment and the real wage rate; effects that have received considerable attention even from the economic thinkers of the classical period. This paper aims to analyze and evaluate the various views and arguments of early classical and neoclassical economists concerning the technological effects on wages and employment. On the one hand, the economists of the early decades of the 19th century (mainly between 1800 and 1840) had recognized and analyzed many of the effects of technology on labourers' welfare. On the other hand, early neoclassical theorists of the period between 1890 and 1935 tried to expand on the classical views and to develop their own theoretical arguments, based on new perceptions like the marginal productivity theory. The main conclusion drawn is that most of early classical and neoclassical economists recognized and specified the temporary adverse effects of new technology on labour (e.g. short-run unemployment), but, at the same time, they argued for the beneficial long-run consequences of technological progress on labourers' welfare.

Testing Marginal Productivity Theory

1960 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 210 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. C. Archibald
Keyword(s):  
Marginal Productivity ◽  
Productivity Theory

Perspectives on Allyn Young in Theories of Endogenous Growth

2000 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 309-328 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger J. Sandilands
Keyword(s):  
Endogenous Growth ◽  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Supply And Demand ◽  
Increasing Returns ◽  
Marginal Productivity ◽  
Seminal Paper ◽  
Economic Progress ◽  
The Social ◽  
Productivity Theory

A central message of Allyn Abbott Young's (1928) seminal paper on increasing returns and economic progress was the seeming tautology that “the division of labor depends in large part upon the division of labor.” From this he deduced that a major source of growth is growth itself. In this fundamental sense growth is endogenous and cumulative. He spoke of the “togetherness” of economic phenomena and doubted that the apparatus of supply and demand and marginal productivity theory could be integrated to give the social picture or explain why growth tends to be self-sustaining rather than self-exhausting.

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