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It was typical in nineteenth century economic thought to view the tensions between the interests of capital and labour as critical to industrial society. Yet later economic thought has generally reduced these tensions to those captured in contract theory. Explores how this narrowing of focus has cast an important source of contemporary social dynamics into the shadows. A broad survey is made of the various ways in which capital‐labour tensions are manifested in today′s advanced industrial economies, with special attention given to the case of the USA. Concludes with a discussion of how intensified international competitiveness, combined with our increasing distance from the threat of material privation, may force societies to restructure their economies so as to eliminate the source of capital‐labour tensions. The task facing liberal economic thought is to expand its scope to better provide guidance for meeting this challenge.

Applies the two‐factor version of the Heckscher‐Ohlin‐Vanek (HOV) theorem. Two hypotheses are derived. The empirical analysis offers support for the second but not for the first hypothesis when trade of each Organization for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) country with the rest of the world is analysed. Examines the factor content of net trade with data on foreign trade between the OECD countries and then determines average capital‐labour ratio as the OECD average. Both the hypotheses receive empirical support. Finds that the two‐factor version of the HOV theorem performs well when applied to the environment where it is supposed to apply.

Formerly socialist economies of Eastern Europe have been advised by the West to adopt the property rights of classical capitalism. Yet the Western economies from which this advice emanates are all struggling to overcome productivity stagnation, resulting from the tensions between the interests of capital and labour. Experiments range from quality circles to far fuller worker participation in decision making and ownership. However, these experiments are coming forth slowly and timidly. Once in place, property rights are exceedingly difficult to alter. Thus those property rights chosen within East European economies over the next several years may be those which define these economies for the foreseeable future. Consequently, it would be an ironic and tragic twist of fact if East European economies were to turn now towards classical capitalism only to find that the future belongs to post‐capitalist forms of productive organization.

Understanding and simulating construction activities is a vital issue from a macro-perspective, since construction is an important contributor in economic development. Although the construction labor productivity frontier has attracted much research effort, the temporal and regional characteristics have not yet been explored. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the long-run equilibrium and dynamics within construction development under a conditional frontier context.

Analogous to the simplified production function, this research adopts the conditional frontier theory to investigate the convergence of construction labor productivity across regions and over time. Error correction models are implemented to identify the long-run equilibrium and dynamics of construction labor productivity against three types of convergence hypotheses, while a panel regression method is used to capture the regional heterogeneity. The developed models are applied to investigate and simulate the construction labor productivity in the Australian states and territories.

The results suggest that construction labor productivity in Australia should converge to stable frontiers in a long-run perspective. The dynamics of the productivity are mainly caused by the technology utilization efficiency levels of the local construction industry, while the influences of changes in technology level and capital depending appear limited. Five regional clusters of the Australian construction labor productivity are suggested by the simulation results, including New South Wales; Australian Capital Territory; Northern Territory, Queensland, and Western Australia; South Australia; and Tasmania and Victoria.

Three types of frontier of construction labor productivity is proposed. An econometric approach is developed to identify the convergence frontier of construction labor productivity across regions over time. The specified model can provides accurate predictions of the construction labor productivity.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of mechanization services on farm productivity in Northern China from an empirical perspective, with the aim to identify the underlying market and institutional barriers.

The authors apply the regression method with the control of village fixed effects to examining the relationship between capital–labor ratio, mechanization service ratio and farm productivity, using the panel data collected in 2013 and 2015 by CCAP.

Mechanization services improve farm productivity through substituting labor, but it may generate a less positive impact on farms who do not have self-owned capital equipment.

It is the first study to investigate how mechanization services affect farm productivity for grain producers in Northern China.

Following Marx and Engels' identification of the “essential condition of capital”, the purpose of this paper is to begin an initial critical exploration of the essential condition of intellectual capital, particularly the ownership rights of labour.

Adopting a critically modernist stance on unitarist HR and OB discourse, and contextualised within a background on the stock option phenomenon and recent accounting regulation, the paper argues that the fundamental nature of the capital‐labour relation continues resiliently into the IC labour (intellectual capital‐labour) relation.

There is strong evidence that broad‐based employee stock options (ESOPs) have become institutionalised in certain firms and sectors – but the future of such schemes is very uncertain (post 2005 accounting regulation). Overly unitarist HR/OB arguments are challenged here with empirical evidence on capital's more latently strategic purposes such as conserving cash, reducing reported accounting expense in order to boost reported earnings, deferring taxes, and attracting, retaining and exploiting key elements of labour.

Research supports the positive benefits of broad‐based employee stock ownership schemes. Further research on the benefits of such schemes and the reasons why they are or are not implemented is now required.

From the perspective of labour, nothing appears to have really changed (yet) in terms of the essential condition of intellectual capital.

This paper explicitly raises the issue of the ownership rights of labour to intellectual capital.

Although the importance of the elasticity of substitution between capital and labour (σ) has been recognized in many areas in economics, this parameter has not received enough attention in economic growth. The purpose of this paper is to review the recent development in the importance of σ in economic growth.

This paper specifically reviews the possibility of perpetual growth and slowdown, and the asymptotic behaviour of the balanced growth path for different values of σ. It also reviews the determinants of the aggregate σ.

Based on the empirical evidence that the value of σ significantly departs from the Cobb‐Douglas value of unity, the paper recommends employing the constant elasticity of substitution (CES) production function in both theoretical and empirical growth research.

This paper offers a new perspective on the elasticity of substitution between capital and labour due to its evaluation of various factors, methods and approaches.

Reports that although there has been significant progress towards greater worker participation and even fuller forms of workplace democracy in recent decades, its potential is all but ignored in modern political discourse. Addresses the compelling reasons why it should receive greater attention. States that greater workplace democracy offers the only viable and sustainable strategy for transcending the divergence of interests between capital and labour. Reveals that this conflict of interests slows productivity growth in a number of ways, most especially underinvestment in human capital, and problems of worker motivation. Also, explains that because of capital’s ever‐increasing mobility, this conflict heightens the pace of community disintegration.

The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of large inflow of foreign workers on the Singapore manufacturing productivity using a panel data at the disaggregated industry level from 1998 to 2008. The results indicate that foreign workers do make productive contribution to manufacturing productivity, but it is much lower as compared to local workers. However, the author observe the declining capital-labour ratio with the increase in the flow of foreign workers. This is expected to have direct impact on the competitiveness of the manufacturing in the export market. Since new technologies are embodied in new capital investment, the declining capital-labour ratio indicates that workers might be producing output with less technology-intensive capital. Conversely, local workers are more productive with high capital investment, indicating that local workers are more skilled and hence there is more complementarity between capital investments and local human capital.

The author implement a panel estimation of disaggregated industry level data of Singapore manufacturing from 1998 to 2008. The author use GMM estimation to control for any endogeneity issues in the estimation.

The results indicate that foreign workers do make productive contribution to manufacturing productivity; but it is much lower as compared to local workers. However; the author observe the declining capital-labour ratio with the increase in the flow of foreign workers.

The data for foreign workers at the disaggregated level is not publically available and this is given for this research purpose. The data for foreign workers is limited as it does not have by educational levels.

This is the first paper to study impact of foreign workers on manufacturing sector at a disaggregated panel data. There are important policy implications for managing foreign workers and achieving sustainable growth for the Singapore economy.

The welfare and social impacts of foreign workers on the Singapore economy is discussed. There is also the issue of policy calibration to balance the flow of foreign workers in the Singapore economy.

This is the first paper to study impact of foreign workers on manufacturing sector at a disaggregated panel data.

This viewpoint reviews the current golden age of corporate purpose and raises the question as to the efficacy of corporate purpose and contributions to social value. The author warns that in the context of global populism, decades of stagnant real wages may bring back the era of contentious capital/labor relations and fundamental questions about the capitalist system.

The viewpoint reflects on longer-term economic and social changes drawn from the literature and uses secondary sources on corporate purpose and the changing nature of work to suggest that corporations need to look at their corporate purpose efforts more critically.

The author finds that there is indeed a growing cause for concern in recent events that reflect new anger at income inequality and its root causes.

As a viewpoint, the findings are, by definition, the author’s own interpretation of the forces at work in capital/labor relations and, therefore, largely subjective.

The corporations that are persuaded to take a more focused look at their wage and labor practices may reap significant reputational benefits in an increasingly contentious environment.

Great upheavals cause great change, but also great suffering. If a movement to reframe capital/labor relations can take hold before the next abrupt caesura, much social conflict can be avoided.

While there is widespread discussion about new ideas such as the universal minimum, it is largely taking place in academia not in the policy space and less still inside corporations.