The Mismatch Thesis. Fiction and Reality in the Accumulation of Capital

Artikel

Political economists, both mainstream and Marxist, find it difficult to reconcile the «real» and «financial» appearances of capital. The conventional view is that «real» capital is an objective productive entity; that «finance» merely reflects this reality; and that, unfortunately, the reflection is often inaccurate, causing the two to «mismatch». This convention, we argue, is baseless if not fraudulent. First, although economists know full well that «real» capital, comprising different capital goods, cannot have a unique objective quantity – they measure this pseudo quantity anyway, arbitrarily. Second, when they realize that their arbitrary measure of «real» capital differs greatly from the corresponding magnitude of finance, they blame the deviation on invisible fluctuations in intangible capital, investor irrationality and market imperfections. And third, they insist that «real» accumulation drives «financial» accumulation, even though their own measures show that the two processes move in opposite directions!

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Journal: Revista de Estudios Globales. Análisis Histórico Y Cambio Social ; Volume: 3 ; Year: 2023 ; Issue: 5 ; Pages: 13-40 ; Murcia: Universidad de Murcia

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Measurement and Data on National Income and Product Accounts and Wealth; Environmental Accounts ; General Aggregative Models: Neoclassical ; History of Economic Thought through 1925: Socialist; Marxist ; History of Economic Thought since 1925: Socialist; Marxist; Sraffian
• Subject: capital accumulation ; finance ; Marxism ; measurement ; Neoclassical economics ; real-nominal duality ; Tobin's Q

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Bichler, Shimshon ; Nitzan, Jonathan
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Universidad de Murcia
• (where): Murcia
• (when): 2023

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/281441
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET