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Economics

University of Massachusetts Amherst

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Income distribution

Articles 1 - 11 of 11

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Endogenous Business Cycles And Economic Policy, Peter Skott Jan 2023

Endogenous Business Cycles And Economic Policy, Peter Skott

Economics Department Working Paper Series

This paper examines the dynamics of Keynesian models that incorporate feedback effects from the labor market to income distribution, in- vestment, aggregate demand and output. A baseline version of the model can generate endogenous growth cycles, but cumulative divergence and economic collapse also become possible for plausible parameter values. Extensions of the model that include monetary and Öscal policy show greater robustness: the local instability of the stationary point leads to limit cycles (rather than complete collapse), even when large, destabilizing changes are made to parameters describing the private sector. The robustness of the general approach is reinforced by the …


Economic Growth In Dual And Mature Economies: Revisiting The Pasinetti And Neo-Pasinetti Theorems, Peter Skott Jan 2022

Economic Growth In Dual And Mature Economies: Revisiting The Pasinetti And Neo-Pasinetti Theorems, Peter Skott

Economics Department Working Paper Series

This paper (i) examines the role of income distribution in the determination of the average saving rate and the growth process in dual and mature economies, and (ii) revisits the Pasinetti and neo-Pasinetti theo- rems. The profit share may influence saving because of differences in the saving rates across households (the Pasinetti theorem) or because firms retain part of their earnings (the neo-Pasinetti theorem). The two mechanisms are not mutually exclusive, and the alignment between warranted and natural growth rates in mature economies can happen through feed- back e¤ects from employment to the distribution of income.


Technical Progress, Capital Accumulation, And Distribution, Naoki Yoshihara, Roberto Veneziani Jan 2019

Technical Progress, Capital Accumulation, And Distribution, Naoki Yoshihara, Roberto Veneziani

Economics Department Working Paper Series

We study the effects of innovations on income distribution in capitalist economies characterised by a drive to accumulate. Consistent with the basic intuitions of Marx’s theory of technical change, we show that there is no obvious relation between ex-ante profitable innovations and the income distribution that actually emerges in equilibrium, and individually rational choices of technique do not necessarily lead to optimal outcomes. Innovations may even cause the disappearance of all equilibria. Methodologically, it is not possible to fully understand the ‘creative destruction’ induced by innovations without capturing the dialectic between individual choices and aggregate outcomes, and the complex network …


Is Planet Earth As A Whole Likely To Be Wage-Led?, Arslan Razmi Jan 2017

Is Planet Earth As A Whole Likely To Be Wage-Led?, Arslan Razmi

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Evidence regarding the relationship between distribution, demand, and growth in the short run has been mixed. Open economy models that create the possibility of beggar-thy-neighbor growth offer one theoretical explanation for why this may be expected. Several authors have argued recently, however, that even if demand and growth are profit-led in many individual countries, the global economy is likely to be wage-led since the planet as a whole runs balanced trade. This paper finds that this argument, although intuitively appealing, does not hold up to careful examination. Although the world economy as a whole is a closed system, it is …


Credit Constraints And Economic Growth In A Dual Economy, Peter Skott, Leopoldo Gómez-Ramírez Jan 2017

Credit Constraints And Economic Growth In A Dual Economy, Peter Skott, Leopoldo Gómez-Ramírez

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Pervasive credit constraints have been seen as major sources of slow growth in developing economies. This paper clarifies a mechanism through which an inefficient financial system can reduce productivity growth. Using a two-sector model, second, we examine the implications for employment and the distribution of income. Both classical and Keynesian versions of the model are considered; saving decisions are central in the classical version while firms’ investment and pricing decisions take center stage in the Keynesian version. We find that, although boosting the asymptotic rate of growth, a relaxation of credit constraints may reduce the share of the formal sector, …


Weaknesses Of 'Wage-Led Growth', Peter Skott Jan 2016

Weaknesses Of 'Wage-Led Growth', Peter Skott

Economics Department Working Paper Series

The emphasis in post-Keynesian macroeconomics on wage-versus profit-led growth may not have been helpful. The profit share is not an exogenous variable, and the correlations between the profit share and economic growth can be positive for some exogenous shocks but negative for others. The terminology, second, suggests a unidirectional causality from distribution to aggregate demand while in fact distribution can itself be directly affected by shifts in aggregate demand. The reduced form correlations,third, depend on interactions with the labor market, and a focus on the goods market can be misleading. If, fourth, empirical estimates are taken at face value, the …


Growth And Distribution In Low Income Economies: Modifying Post Keynesian Analysis In Light Of Theory And History, Arslan Razmi Jan 2015

Growth And Distribution In Low Income Economies: Modifying Post Keynesian Analysis In Light Of Theory And History, Arslan Razmi

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Growth in low-income developing economies with large sectors characterized by underemployment is unlikely to be wage-led in the traditional neo-Kaleckian sense of the term. Output and employment in the sectors of the economy producing non-tradable output could be demand-led, however, and policies directly aimed at more equitable distribution in these sectors could boost long-run growth. Some of the fast growing Asian economies may have been examples of wage-led growth in this rather different sense of the term. Over time, re-distributive measures in the traditional sector, such as land reforms, could lead to faster wage and output growth across the economy.


Social Democracy And Distributive Conflict In The Uk, 1950- 2010, Carlo V. Fiorio, Simon Mohun, Roberto Veneziani May 2013

Social Democracy And Distributive Conflict In The Uk, 1950- 2010, Carlo V. Fiorio, Simon Mohun, Roberto Veneziani

Economics Department Working Paper Series

In the last three decades, two questions have been central for the Left. Is there a future for electoral socialism and social democracy? And, is it any longer possible to promote a significant redistribution of income in favour of labour? Political and economic events seem to suggest negative answers. In his influential work, Adam Przeworski suggests that this is an irreversible trend that makes it impossible in the long-run to promote genuinely socialist objectives in capitalist democracies. In particular, the structural dependence of labour on capital severely constrains feasible income distributions. In this paper, a detailed quantitative and qualitative analysis …


Technology, Distribution And The Rate Of Profit In The Us Economy: Understanding The Current Crisis, Deepankar Basu, Ramaa Vasudevan Nov 2011

Technology, Distribution And The Rate Of Profit In The Us Economy: Understanding The Current Crisis, Deepankar Basu, Ramaa Vasudevan

Economics Department Working Paper Series

This paper offers a synoptic account of the state of the debate within Marxist scholars regarding the current structural crisis of capitalism, identifies two broad streams within the literature dealing, in turn, with aggregate demand and profitability problems, and proceeds to concentrate on an analysis of issues surrounding the profitability problem in two steps. First, evidence on profitability trends for the Nonfarm Nonfinancial Corporate Business, the Nonfinancial Corporate Business and the Corporate Business sectors in post-War U.S. are summarized. A broad range of profit rate measures are covered and data from both the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (NIPA and …


An Empirical Evaluation Of Three Post Keynesian Models, Peter Skott, Ben Zipperer Sep 2010

An Empirical Evaluation Of Three Post Keynesian Models, Peter Skott, Ben Zipperer

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Structuralist and post Keynesian models differ in their assumptions about firms’ investment behavior and pricing/output decisions. This paper compares three benchmark models: Kaleckian, Robinsonian and Kaldorian. We analyze the implications of these models for the steady growth path and the cyclical properties of the economy, and evaluate the consistency of the theoretical predictions with empirical evidence for the US. Our regression results and the stylized cyclical pattern of key variables are consistent with the Kaldorian model. The Kaleckian investment function and the Robinsonian pricing behavior find no support in the data.


Cyclical Patterns Of Employment, Utilization And Profitability, Ben Zipperer, Peter Skott Jan 2010

Cyclical Patterns Of Employment, Utilization And Profitability, Ben Zipperer, Peter Skott

Economics Department Working Paper Series

The interaction between income distribution, accumulation, employment and the utilization of capital is central to macroeconomic models in the `heterodox' tradition. This paper examines the stylized pattern of these variables using US data for the period after 1948. We look at the trends and cycles in individual time series and examine the bivariate cycical patterns among the variables.