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This chapter aims at making clear growth and distribution of China’s economy 1987–2000 with fixed capital on the input-output table basis. Since fixed capital data are not sufficiently available, one has to estimate fixed capital coefficients. In the outset, this chapter outlines the Sraffa–Fujimori method, which simulates the maximum growth path and estimates the marginal fixed capital coefficients on that path. In the second place, the marginal fixed capital coefficients of China’s economy are estimated. In the third place, the wage-profit curves of China’s economy will be drawn, and we discuss some further features obtained by our observations.

In the current literature, there is little systematic research on the relationship among adjustment of the income distribution, change in economic structure and improvement of macroeconomic efficiency.

This paper expands Marx's reproduction schema into the “Marx–Sraffa” three-department structure table comprising fixed capital, general means of production and means of consumption and employs China's input–output table from 1987 to 2015 to portray the relationship between income distribution and macroeconomic efficiency under investment-driven growth.

This paper calculates the wage–profit curve of China's economy and evaluates the space of macroeconomic efficiency improvement in China based on the deviation between actual and potential income distribution structure.

The results show that there is a downward trend of the profit rate, which meets Marx's theoretical prediction, and the decline in the profit rate is mainly attributed to an increase in the organic composition of capital arising from the rapid growth of fixed capital investment under extended growth. The analysis of macroeconomic efficiency shows that the space for improving macroeconomic efficiency is extremely limited under traditional growth pattern and that China must transform its economic development pattern and foster new economic growth drivers.

This chapter argues that the Marxian theory of exploitation underlies the concepts of surplus and deficit industries that appear in Sraffa’s (1960) Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities. This is seen from archival research of the unpublished papers of Piero Sraffa housed at the Wren Library, Trinity College, University of Cambridge. There it is shown that the origin of these concepts lies in the Marxian theory of exploitation that Sraffa developed regarding the notion of the ‘pool of profits’ the Italian economist utilized over a 14-year period from 1942 to 1956. The chapter engages in an extensive textual study of the archival evidence and then presents a simple analytical model of these relations.

This paper explores the pattern of technical change in the Korean economy from 1970 to 2013 and investigates its determinants. We use the Classical growth-distribution schedule to show that the labor-saving and capital-using pattern has predominated. For the rationale behind this Marx-biased technical change, we focus on the relationship between technical change and real wage growth via the evolution of labor and capital productivity, and verify the historical direction of technical change against the rise and fall of the working class. Furthermore, we find that the deviation during the post-crisis period from the long-run trend of Marx-biased technical change is not attributable to the vitality of new technological innovations, but rather the reflection of class dynamics over extracting productivity under weaker capital deepening. The results suggest that the recent deterioration of labor share and labor unions in Korea is closely associated with low incentive for technological progress, which contributes to prolonged stagnation.

Resurgent interest in the life and work of the Italian Cambridge economist Piero Sraffa is leading to New Directions in Sraffa Scholarship. This chapter introduces readers to some of these developments. First and perhaps foremost is the fact that as of September 2016 Sraffa’s archival material has been uploaded onto the website of the Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge University, as digital colour images; this chapter introduces readers to the history of these events. This history provides sharp relief on the extant debates over the role of the archival material in leading to the final publication of Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities, and readers are provided a brief sketch of these matters. The varied nature of Sraffa scholarship is demonstrated by the different aspects of Sraffa’s intellectual legacy which are developed and discussed in the various entries of our Symposium. The conclusion is reached that we are on the cusp of an exciting phase change of tremendous potential in Sraffa scholarship.

Sraffian's concept or metaphor of a “pool profits” is theoretically pointless and empirically irrelevant. The appropriate calculation is the variation of the equilibrium price vector along the factor price frontier.

This paper discusses labor value and the rate of exploitation in the global economy using international input–output tables. Labor value is defined as the multiplication of the labor coefficient and Leontief inverse. Exploitation means that the amount of labor embodied in the received wage commodity is less than the amount of the labor actually sold. Therefore, the Fundamental Marxian Theorem, which states that the conditions for the existence of profit and those for the existence of exploitation are the same, should be modified to stipulate that the existence of profit requires exploitation in at least one country. In other words, exploitation may not exist in some countries (non-exploitation). In the context of international input–output tables, we introduce the concept of global labor value, which is the vector of embodied labor in various countries. In the empirical study using an international input–output table, we find that (1) there are non-exploitation cases in several countries. (2) During the time period 1995–2009, the rate of exploitation increased in Asian countries, namely China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, whereas the advanced countries other than Asia faced a decreased rate of exploitation.

This chapter introduces Marx's theory of the determination of profit rates. It contrasts this theory with what happened in the late nineteenth century to British profit rates with a detailed statistical account. It identifies missing features in the standard presentation and contrasts these with the overaccumulation hypothesis that he presents elsewhere. A formal mathematical model using the overaccumulation hypothesis is then given and tested against modern empirical data.

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.