Nobuo Okishio

Nobuo Okishio ( Jap. 置塩信雄 , Okishio Nobuo ; * 2. January 1927 in Hyogo-ku , Kobe , † 13. November 2003 ) was a Japanese economist and emeritus professor of the University of Kobe . In 1979 he became President of the Japanese Association of Economics and Econometrics ( 理論 ・ 計量 経 済 学会 , riron keiryō keizai gakkai ), which is now called the Japanese Economic Association.

Okishio studied business mathematics with Kazuo Mizutani . In 1950 he graduated from Kobe University and also taught there. After that, he began to question the principles of modern economics and studied Marxist economic theory .

Okishio's work was concerned with explaining economic aspects of Marx 's theories and providing formal (and mathematical) evidence. In 1955 he was the first to prove the Marxist fundamental theorem that only work can create the added value that leads to profit, since the value of the raw materials and materials required for production is given. The okishio's theorem states that the rate of profit for the economy as a whole is higher when a new, more profitable from the perspective of the individual enterprise technology is introduced. It contradicts the Marxist law that the rate of profit tends to fall .

Okishio wrote many articles on important areas of modern and Marxist economic theory, such as value and price , accumulation theory , critical analysis of Keynesianism , business cycle, and long-term developments of capitalist economies. His ideas have been published in over twenty books and two hundred articles, most of them in Japanese. Thirty articles are published in English and his most important contributions are summarized in the book (Nobuo Okishio, Michael Kruger and Peter Flaschel, 1993).

Value and exploitation theory

How much is work worth

Okishio showed how the Marxist value (according to labor theory ) can be quantified. Okishio presented the following equation about how much direct and indirect labor is needed to produce one unit of a commodity:

 ti = Σaij + τi  (i = 1, .... ,n).

a _ij is the number of goods j and τ _i is the labor directly required to produce a unit of goods i . The idea first occurred to him when he wrote Kōkan-ron ni tsuite ( 交換 論 に つ い て ; About the exchange theory) in 1954 , and he formulated it even more clearly in 1955 in the English article "Monopoly and the Rates of Profits", which he wrote in the Kobe University Economic Review published. To better understand the equation itself, see Input-Output Analysis .

Marxist fundamental theorem

With the above equation, Okishio Marx's fundamental statement proved that extra work is a necessary condition for making profit . Michio Morishima later called this sentence "Marxist fundamental sentence". The proof assumes profit as a proportion of the price and deduces the existence of surplus value as a logical consequence. This is the opposite direction of Marx, who started from value (economy) and derived price and profit.

Determination of value and price

Based on this value equation, the input-output analysis developed after the Second World War can be used to determine how much of which raw material is contained in goods. This gives the value of the goods, which can be compared with the actual price demanded on the market. While there can be considerable deviations in the short term, in the long term the prices always approach the value (quote missing).

Okishio first attempted this provision in 1958 for the Japanese economy. Since then, such quantitative analyzes have existed for many countries.

Publications

Books

• Nobuo Okishio ed (1992), Business cycles: theories and numerical simulation (Dynamische Wirtschaftstheorie; Vol. 12) , Peter Lang Publishing.
• Nobuo Okishio, Michael Kruger and Peter Flaschel (1993), Nobuo Okishio-Essays on Political Economy: Collected Papers , Peter Lang Publishing ISBN 3-631-43558-4 .

items

• "Monopoly and the Rates of Profit", 1955, Kobe University economic review 1.71-88.
• "Durable Equipment and Equilibrium Growth", 1958, Kobe University economic review 4.29-40.
• "Technical Changes and the Rate of Profit", 1961, Kobe University economic review 7: 85-99.
• “A Mathematical Note on Marxian Theory”, 1963, Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv 91-2.
• "Instability of Harrod = Domar's Steady Growth", 1964, Kobe University economic review 10.19-27.
• "On Mr. N. Kaldor's Growth Model," 1967, Kobe University economic review 13, 43-58.
• “An Extension of a Discrete Version of Pontryagin's Maximum Principle and its Simple Application”, 1970, Kobe University economic review 16: 37-48.
• “A Formal Proof of Marx's Two Theorems”, 1972 Kobe University economic review 18: 1-6.
• "Value and Production-Price", 1974, Kobe University economic review 20.1-19.
• "Fixed Capital and Extended Reproduction", 1975, Kobe University economic review 21: 11-27.
• “Marxian Fundamental Theorem: Joint-Production Case”, 1976, Kobe University economic review 22.1-11.
• “Inflation as an Expression of Class Antagonisms”, 1977, Kobe University economic review 23: 17-29.
• "Theorems of Investment Truncation", The annals of the School of Business Administration, Kobe University 21: 73-90, 1977.
• Notes on Technical Progress and Capitalist Society, 1977, Cambridge Journal of Economics 1 (1), 93-100.
• “Three Topics on Marxian Fundamental Theorems”, 1978, Kobe University economic review 24: 1-18.
• "Dimensional Analysis in Economics", 1982, Kobe University economic review 28: 31-44.
• "The Decision of New Investment, Technique and Rate of Utilization," 1984, Kobe University economic review 30: 15-32.
• “A Measurement of the Rate of Surplus Value in Japan: The 1980 Case”, 1985, Kobe University economic review 31: 1-13.
• “Stagflation: Causes and Policies”, 1986, Kobe economic & business review 32,33-54.
• “Theoretical Foundations of International Macro-Economic Model”, 1987, Kobe University economic review 33.1-16.
• "On Marx's Reproduction Scheme", 1988, Kobe University economic review 34: 1-24.
• Problems and Method of Economics, 1989, Kobe economic & business review 34, 101-108.
• "On the Theories of Determination of the Real Wage Rate," 1989, Kobe University economic review 35: 1-13.
• "The Permissible Range of Relative Prices in the Light of Lavor Values", 1995, Kobe University economic review 41.1-14.
• "Competition and Production Price", 2000, Cambridge Journal of Economics 25 (4), 493-501.

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1. ↑ ^{a b} Input / Output Analysis  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Statistics and Mathematics, Vienna University of Economics and Business