Notes Toward A Wicksellian Model of Distributive Shares

Abstract

It is always a comfort to read or re-read Wicksell. No other great economist is so candid, so cheerful about putting all his cards on the table and so unassuming about the strength of his hand. Even so technical a work as his ‘Mathematical Analysis of Akerman’s Problem’ ¹ is attractive for this reason as well as for the power and modernity of the capital theory it contains. In this brief essay (part of a book review written at the age of 72!) Wicksell works out a sort of streamlined, Austrian capital theory and does it in such a way that it would fall neatly into place in a full Walrasian general equilibrium scheme. At the same time the analysis is cast formally in terms of a simple macro-economic model, and it is from this point of view that I want to consider it.