Ormerod and Mounfield (Physica A 293 (2001) 573) analyse GDP data of 17 leading capitalist economies from 1870 to 1994 and conclude that the frequency of the duration of recessions is consistent with a power law. But in fact the data is consistent with an exponential (Boltzmann–Gibbs) law.

Why has firm activity been slow to recover from the Great Recession? I present theoretical and empirical evidence suggesting long-term uncertainty may be one reason. Specifically, I show the current level of uncertainty and expectations of future uncertainty -- that is, the entire term structure...

The paper argues that the standard definition of labour value assumes that capitalists abstain from consumption during the period of replacement. The non standard definition of labour value assumes that capitalists consume. Both the transformation problem and the problem of an invariable measure...

A common assumption of political economy is that profit rates across firms or sectors tend to uniformity, and often models are formulated in which this tendency is assumed to have been realised. But in reality this tendency is never realised and the distribution of firm profits is not degenerate...

A dynamic computational model of a simple commodity economy is examined and a theory of the relationship between commodity values, market prices and the efficient division of social labour is developed. The main conclusions are: (i) the labour value of a commodity is an attractor for its market...

A dynamic model of the social relations between workers and capitalists is introduced. The model self-organises into a dynamic equilibrium with statistical properties that are in close qualitative and in many cases quantitative agreement with a broad range of known empirical distributions of...

This paper outlines a multisector dynamic model of the convergence of market prices to natural prices in conditions of fixed technology and composition of demand. Prices and quantities adjust in real-time in response to excess supplies and differential profit-rates. Finance capitalists earn...