This paper analyses the theoretical issues related to the measurement of labour content in the context of general technologies with heterogeneous labour. A novel axiomatic framework is used in order to formulate the key properties of the notion of labour content and analyse its theoretical...

This paper surveys and extends some recent contributions on the theory of exploitation as the unequal exchange of labour. A model of dynamic economies with heterogeneous optimising agents is presented which encompasses the models used in the literature as special cases. It is shown that the...

In the standard Okishio-Morishima approach, the existence of profits is proved to be equivalent to the exploitation of labour. Yet, it can also be proved that the existence of profits is equivalent to the ‘exploitation’ of any good. Labour and commodity exploitation are just different...

This paper provides a novel axiomatic analysis of exploitation as the unequal exchange of labour in economies with heterogeneous opti-mising agents endowed with unequal amounts of physical and human capital. A de.nition of exploitation is proposed, which emphasises the relational nature of...

In the standard Okishio-Morishima approach, the existence of profits is proved to be equivalent to the exploitation of labor. Yet, it can also be proved that the existence of profits is equivalent to the “exploitation†of any good. Labor and commodity exploitation are just different...

This paper analyses the theoretical issues related to the measurement of labour content in the context of general technologies with heterogeneous labour. A novel axiomatic framework is used in order to formulate the key properties of the notion of labour content and analyse its theoretical...

This paper analyses the theoretical issues related to the measurement of labour content in the context of general technologies with heterogeneous labour. A novel axiomatic framework is used in order to formulate the key properties of the notion of labour content and analyse its theoretical...