Università Roma Tre

MODULE 2:
IV. THE DETERMINATION OF OUTPUT IN THE TWO THEORETICAL APPROACHES
V. KEYNES’S GENERAL THEORY.
VI. THE NEOCLASSICAL SYNTHESIS AND THE IMPAIRMENT OF THE KEYNESIAN REVOLUTION

All didactic material will be either given or indicated to students at the beginning of the course. Students may contact the professor at any point of the course

INTRODUCTION
1. Theories of value and distribution: the different theoretical approaches. The connections with the theory of production. Outlines of the surplus approach

I. THE MARGINALIST THEORY: DETERMINATION
OF VALUE IN PURE EXCHANGE EQUILIBRIUM

2. Marginal utility. Individual equilibrium.
3. Individual supply and demand curves (independent and non-independent goods).
4. Collective supply and demand curves. General equilibrium (graphic study): existence; stability; uniqueness/multiplicity.
5. Equations of general equilibrium (2 goods, m individuals; specialization and general case). Walras' law.
6. Possible 'exceptions': superabundance and free goods (or non-existence of equilibrium?); increasing demand curve and instability.

II. THE MARGINALIST THEORY: VALUE AND DISTRIBUTION
IN THE CASE OF PRODUCTION WITHOUT CAPITAL
7. Marginal utility and supply curves of the factors. Indirect substitutability and factor demand curves.
8. Income distribution and price of commodities (supply curves for commodities). Equations of general equilibrium in the case of production with fixed coefficients. Walras' law.
9. The problem of the existence of equilibrium under the hypothesis of fixed coefficients. The hypothesis of variable coefficients: marginal productivity.
10. The problem of product exhaustion.
11. The marginalist theory and the notion of substitutability (plausibility of the notion and its role within the theory). The simultaneous determination of prices and quantities.

III. THE MARGINALIST THEORY: VALUE AND DISTRIBUTION
IN THE CASE OF PRODUCTION WITH CAPITAL

12. Production with capital: the problem of the variability of coefficients; the condition of uniformity of the profit rate.
13. The treatment of capital as a complex of quantities and the absence of a uniform profit rate.
14. The treatment of capital as a single quantity: capital as a sum of value. Problems on the supply side. Problems on the demand side.

Lezioni sulla teoria neoclassica (handouts)