Piketty’s Inequality between the Profit and Growth Rates and Its Implications for the Reproduction of Economic Elites
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Date
2016-12
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Publisher
Scientific Research
Abstract
This paper studies, within a growth model, some effects of the inequality between the
profit and growth rates on the reproduction of economic elites. To this end, it considers
as functions of the capital/income ratio the relations between, on the one
hand, the economic growth rate and, on the other hand, the growth rates of capital
and of national income. Based on this, it shows that when the income of a particular
socio-economic stratum increases with respect to the national income, the lower limit
for the growth rate of the first income depends almost exclusively on the variations
of the capital/income ratio and of the average productivity of labor, while the employment
growth rate plays a secondary role. Moreover, the paper distinguishes between
three categories of renter and establishes sufficient conditions for the reproduction
of each one of them. It points out that the third category, which comprises
those renter dynasties whose share in the national capital stock increases with each
generation, constitutes a quasi-feudal development within capitalist societies.
Description
Keywords
Economic Elites, Income Inequality, Piketty, Renter Dynasties, Sraffa
Citation
Theoretical Economics Letters, 2016, 6, 1363-1392