STOREP CONFERENCES, STOREP 2017 - Investments, Finance, and Instability

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Gravitation of Market Prices towards Production Prices: Some New Results
Enrico Bellino, Franklin Serrano

Last modified: 2017-05-27

Abstract


The gravitation process of market prices towards  production prices is here presented by means of an analytical framework where the classical capital mobility principle is coupled with a determination of the deviation of market from normal (natural) prices which closely follows the description provided by Adam Smith: each period the level of the market price of a commodity will be higher (lower) than its production price if the quantity brought to the market falls short (exceeds) the level of effectual demand. This approach also simplifies the results with respect to those obtained in cross-dual literature. At the same time, the choice to anchor market prices to effectual demand of each commodity asks to study very carefully the dynamics of the ‘dimensions’ along with that of the ‘proportions’ of the system. Three different versions of the model are thus proposed, in which we study the gravitation process: i) on the assumption of a given level of employment; ii)  assuming a sort of Say’s law; iii) and on the basis of  an explicit adjustment of actual output to effectual demand. All these cases describe  dynamics in which  market prices can converge asymptotically towards production prices.

Keywords


Market prices, normal prices, Classical competition, gravitation, effectual demand, production prices

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