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Distribution concerns who gets what. But does “who” refer to the personal distribution of income among individuals or the functional distribution of income among suppliers of productive factors? For nearly 150 years, Anglophone distribution theory followed the Ricardian emphasis on functional distribution – the income shares of labor, land, and capital. Only beginning in the 1960s, and consolidated by a research outpouring in the early 1970s, does mainstream economics turn to the personal conception of distribution. This essay documents Anglophone (primarily American) economics’ move from functional to personal distribution, and tries to illuminate something of its causes and timing.

“Economics is a Serious Subject.” Edwin Cannan.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of the gravity and the magnetic fields on the plane waves in a homogenous, linear and isotropic thermoelastic medium subjected to the laser pulse heating.

The problem has been solved analytically and numerically by using the normal mode analysis.

Numerical results for the temperature, the displacement components, the stress components and the volume fraction were presented graphically and analyzed the results. The graphical results indicate that the effect of gravity and magnetic fields are observable physical effects on the porous thermoelastic material heated by a laser pulse. Comparisons are made with the results in the absence and presence of the gravity and the magnetic fields, also at various times.

In the present work, the authors shall formulate a 2-D problem for the propagation of plane waves on the porous thermoelastic material influenced by the gravity and the magnetic fields subjected to a laser pulse heating act as a thermal shock. A comparison is also made between the two types II and III of Green-Naghdi theory in the absence and the presence of the gravity and the magnetic fields. Such problems are very important in many dynamical systems.

Allyn Young′s lectures, as recorded by the young Nicholas Kaldor, survey the historical roots of the subject from Aristotle through to the modern neo‐classical writers. The focus throughout is on the conditions making for economic progress, with stress on the institutional developments that extend and are extended by the size of the market. Organisational changes that promote the division of labour and specialisation within and between firms and industries, and which promote competition and mobility, are seen as the vital factors in growth. In the absence of new markets, inventions as such play only a minor role. The economic system is an inter‐related whole, or a living “organon”. It is from this perspective that micro‐economic relations are analysed, and this helps expose certain fallacies of composition associated with the marginal productivity theory of production and distribution. Factors are paid not because they are productive but because they are scarce. Likewise he shows why Marshallian supply and demand schedules, based on the “one thing at a time” approach, cannot adequately describe the dynamic growth properties of the system. Supply and demand cannot be simply integrated to arrive at a picture of the whole economy. These notes are complemented by eleven articles in the Encyclopaedia Britannica which were published shortly after Young′s sudden death in 1929.

Nobody concerned with political economy can neglect the history of economic doctrines. Structural changes in the economy and society influence economic thinking and, conversely, innovative thought structures and attitudes have almost always forced economic institutions and modes of behaviour to adjust. We learn from the history of economic doctrines how a particular theory emerged and whether, and in which environment, it could take root. We can see how a school evolves out of a common methodological perception and similar techniques of analysis, and how it has to establish itself. The interaction between unresolved problems on the one hand, and the search for better solutions or explanations on the other, leads to a change in paradigma and to the formation of new lines of reasoning. As long as the real world is subject to progress and change scientific search for explanation must out of necessity continue.

This essay explores certain aspects of single product industry basic systems of the type Sraffa develops in Part I of Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities. It focusses on triangular trade as the simplest expression of the more general n-commodity case. Two elements of the framework are explored: (i) the relation of exchange between all commodities, conceived as the configuration of exchange which is applicable to the subsistence and surplus models, and (ii) the value/price expressions of labour time, applicable to the surplus model only, which posits the productivity of, remuneration to and extraction from living labour added to the system. This analysis complements and extends the Marxian reading of Sraffa’s notions of surplus and deficit industries first explored in Carter (2014b). The methodology of ‘given quantities’ in expositing the relations developed is adopted in this essay as it corresponds to the same method employed by Sraffa. This allows readers to easily move from the present essay to Sraffa’s book and importantly his archival notes which are now for all interested parties available as colour digital images on the Wren Library website.

Channels of distribution are basic to the marketing strategies of firms, and have been shown to be a key element in the marketing mix. The author here undertakes a comprehensive review of channels literature, primarily to identify and assess the adequacy of the various mainstream conceptual schemes which have emerged. Economic‐based arguments have largely been at the core of channels literature, although these have been partially offset by the concepts of the organisational and behavioural schools. The author concludes that whereas every conceptual approach reviewed has added something to our cumulative knowledge, no single approach has yet reached a point of adequate conceptualisation based on his own basic criteria. As yet channels literature is mainly descriptive, and has virtually no predictive power.

Seligman's evaluation of Longfield's work concentrated exclusively on his views on value and distribution as set out in the Lectures on Political Economy. He noted that Longfield adopted many of the doctrines of the classical school but dissented from it in his treatment of distribution above all in his theory of profits (Seligman, 1903, p. 526). Seligman began with an examination of Longfield's ‘noteworthy’ theory of value which takes into account ‘the influence of cost of production upon the supply side of the equation’ as well as calling attention to the demand side (Seligman, 1903, p. 526). In discussing the demand side, Longfield pointed out that although the intensity of demand varies with different persons, all will affect their purchases at the market price. If an attempt was made to raise price above this level, the demanders whose intensity of demand was measured by the former price would cease to be purchasers. ‘Thus the market price is measured by that demand, which being of the least intensity leads to actual purchases’ (Longfield, 1834, p. 113; Seligman, 1903, p. 526). Seligman went on to note that, for Longfield, not only did intensity of demand vary between persons but also that ‘the same person may be said to have in himself several demands of different degrees of intensity’. Longfield wrote:Each individual contains as it were within himself, a series of demands of successively increasing degrees of intensity; that the lowest degree of this series which at any time leads to a purchase, is exactly the same for both rich and poor, and is that which regulates the market price and that in the case of the rich man, the series increases more rapidly, that is to say, the intensity of his demand increases more rapidly in proportion to the diminution of his consumption than in the case of the poor man. (Longfield, 1834, p. 115)