Spectral Theory of Value and Actual Economies: Controllability, Effective Demand, and Cycles

Theodore Mariolis · Nikolaos Rodousakis · George Soklis

May 2021 · Evolutionary Economics and Social Complexity Science Book 24 · Springer Nature

About this ebook

This book develops a unified treatment of the income distribution–capital–value problems with respect to actual economies, and then gradually turns to the issues of effective demand and capitalist accumulation fluctuations from both political economy and economic policy perspectives. That treatment, on the one hand, places produced means of production, positive profits, and capital accumulation at the centre of the analysis and, on the other hand, is analytically based on the modern control theory. Hence, the authors’ investigation is concerned with input–output representations of actual single and joint production, heterogeneous labour, and open economies; zeroes in on the characteristic value distributions of the system matrices; and, finally, derives meaningful theoretical results consistent with the empirical evidence, and vice versa. The main topics addressed are the uncontrollable/unobservable aspects of the real-world economies, the powerful low-order spectral approximations and reconstructions of the inter-industry structure of production–value–distributive variables relationships, the critical-constructive appraisal of both “mainstream” and “radical” theories of value, the matrix demand multipliers and demand-switching policies in heterogeneous capital worlds, and the circular inter-actions amongst income distribution, effective demand, accumulation, and technical conditions of production. Written on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the publication of both Piero Sraffa’s Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities and Rudolf E. Kalman’s paper “On the general theory of control systems”, this book provides a consistent and comprehensive framework for theoretical, empirical, and economic policy research.

About the author

Theodore Mariolis is Professor of Political Economy in the Department of Public Administration at the Panteion University of Athens, Greece. His main educational and research interests are Political Economy, Input–Output Analysis, International Economics, Theory of Endogenous Economic Fluctuations, and History of Economic Thought. He was Founder & Co-Editor of the journal “Bulletin of Political Economy”, and is Director of the “Study Group on Sraffian Economics”.
Nikolaos Rodousakis is a Research Fellow in the Centre of Planning and Economic Research (KEPE), Athens, Greece. He holds a Degree in ‘Public Economics’, a M.A. in ‘Economics of Production and Intersectoral Relations’, and a PhD in ‘Economics’ from the Department of Public Administration of the Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Greece. His main educational and research interests are Political Economy, Input–Output Analysis, and Theory of Endogenous Economic Fluctuations.
George Soklis is a Research Fellow in the Centre of Planning and Economic Research (KEPE), Athens, Greece. He holds a Degree in ‘Public Economics’, a M.A. in ‘Economics of Production and Intersectoral Relations’, and a PhD in ‘Economics’ from the Department of Public Administration of the Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Greece. His main educational and research interests are Political Economy, Input–Output Analysis, and Tourism Economics.