[OPE-L:3495] Re: accumulation: disequilibrium dynamics

Steve Keen (s.keen@uws.edu.au)
Sun, 20 Oct 1996 20:58:04 -0700 (PDT)

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Yep, and my reason for introducing a rising population is that such is the
fact--though the rise follows a logistic path rather than exponential, and
there does appear to be a relationship between income levels and position on
the logistic curve.

My single sector stuff (the Goodwin/Minsky paper) has a rising population,
of course--and the dynamic between capital accumulation and employment
includes a rising population as well as technical change.

>Steve K wrote in [OPE-L:3489]:
>
>> (a) introducing technical change introduces lots of other complications. For
>> a start, if I have technical change, then I also have to have an expanding
>> population, otherwise in the limit my model will predict declining
>> employment.
>
>You have to have a *reason* for having an expanding population other than
>the desire to not let the model predict declining employment. I.e. if you
>are going to predict a population that expands with accumulation (and
>thereby make the size of the population endogenous), you have to specify
>reasons for *why* population would grow alongside the growth of
>accumulation.
>
>Since you have not stated otherwise, I assume above that you are referring
>to the size of the population in an *absolute* sense, rather than the size
>of the working population.
>
>> (b) With technical change but without finance, you must have a "real",
>> commodity-money perspective on finance. This is how Marx began Capital
>> I--everything is a commodity. It can work as a starting point, but only if
>> you're cogniscant of the need to introduce non-commodities later on. That
>> doesn't necessarily happen: people can continue to try to make a
>> commodity-money perspective (developed without a finance sector) fit a
>> non-commodity-money situation (when a finance sector is introduced).
>
>This is certainly an issue. I guess the question is at what point in the
>analysis do you introduce the possibility of credit-money.
>
>In Solidarity,
>
>Jerry
>
>
>
Steve Keen
Senior Lecturer
Economics & Finance
University of Western Sydney
PO Box 555 Campbelltown NSW 2560
Australia
s.keen@uws.edu.au (046) 20-3254 Fax (046) 26-6683
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