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This paper subjects to empirical testing the standard (based on the notion of vertical integration) method for the estimation of labor values and prices of production against an alternative one known as the Temporary Single-System Interpretation (TSSI), an approach that finds strong support among a new generation of researchers. Our empirical findings from the Canadian economy suggest that both methods give rise to estimates of labor values and prices of production that are surprisingly close to observed prices. Further examination however reveals that the TSSI contradicts some of the basic tenets of logical consistency of the theory that indents to vindicate. These results lend support to the standard Marxian theory, and the estimating methods associated with it constitute a fertile ground for further research.

This paper aims to present the salient features of Smith's argument of the falling rate of profit. This theory has usually been interpreted as a result of the intensification of competition in the markets of goods and services of the factors of production. This aspect of Adam Smith had been initially posed by Ricardo and subsequently was widely adopted by the major economists of the past as well as from the majority of the modern historians of economic thought.

This paper reviews the major interpretation of the argument from Ricardo and Marx as well as from major historians of economic thought, and then attempts to reconstruct Smith's argument, which is scattered throughout the Wealth of Nations. The authors present some indirect empirical evidence based on the evolution of interest rates on annuities lending support to Smith's insights of the falling rate of profit.

In the author's view, Smith's analysis of the falling tendency in the rate of profit is by far more complex than usually presented and that the intensification of competition is the result of the falling rate of profit rather than its cause which is the capitalization of the production process.

This paper presents a review of existing literature and an interpretation of Adam Smith's original model of the falling rate of profit.