<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type"> </head> <body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000"> So Woj I take it by "predictive power" you mean (as we are talking about the social sciences here) that the LTV to qualify as a real social scientific theory would have to be capable of specifying the key explanatory variable(s) (eg. R) that are responsible for the direction of change in a dependent variable (eg. Y).  Where R is total profits and Y is total output.  But more than this a good social scientific theory should also be able to explain the origin and the magnitude of the independent variable (in our example R).   Now this is really the nub of the LTV.  It supplies a plausible and testable theory for both R and Y.  I am more than happy to prepare a bibliography of more of the empirical tests of the LTV if you would like but these should get you started. Perhaps you could start here. "The Golden Age Illusion: Rethinking Postwar Capitalism" M. Webber and D. Rigby.  For a more theoretically orientated discussion start here: "The New Value Controversy and the Foundations of Economics" Edited by Freeman, Kliman and Wells.  See in this volume "The Case  for Simplicity: a Paradigm for the Political Economy of the 21st century" Alan Freeman. For less lengthy empirical tests see : The Empirical Strength of the Labor Theory of Value (1998) in Conference Proceedings of Marxian Economics: A Centenary Appraisal, Riccardo Bellofiore (ed.), Macmillan, London [<a href="http://homepage.newschool.edu/%7EAShaikh/labthvalue.pdf">Download PDF 584KB</a>] Also on the SNA see Measuring the Wealth of Nations: The Political Economy of National Accounts (1994) co-authored with E. Ahmet Tonak, Cambridge University Press. [<a href="http://homepage.newschool.edu/%7EAShaikh/wealth.pdf">Download Ch. 1 PDF 140KB</a>] For a reasonable treatment on the Connection between SV and the Profit Rate and therefore the LTV see: <a href="http://home.mtholyoke.edu/%7Efmoseley/Working_Papers_PDF/RRPE.pdf">The Rate of Profit and the Future of Capitalism </a><a href="http://home.mtholyoke.edu/%7Efmoseley/Working_Papers_PDF/RRPE.pdf">in Review of Radical Political Economics, 1997</a> These should get you started. Enjoy Travis Wojtek Sokolowski wrote: <blockquote cite="mid0ITC0097KLUD97@jhuml3.jhu.edu" type="cite"> <pre wrap="">Travis: </pre> <blockquote type="cite"> <pre wrap="">Woj now just confess your faith in the doctrine of comparative advantage and you will have fulfilled all the requirements for a degree in economics. Who knows maybe you could get a Nobel prize by arguing that people do not always have perfect information but act as though they do. Really your capacity to wax certain on the LTOV would be amazing if only your post did not read like a quote out of "economic polemics for dummies". </pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap=""> So what is exactly that you are saying? That I am wrong and that the LTV does have predictive power? If so, what did it predict? Please do tell, I am all ears. Wojtek ___________________________________ <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk">http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk</a> </pre> </blockquote> </body> </html>