The Labour Theory of Value as Foundation for Empirical Investigations

This paper outlines some recent approaches to the construction of an accounting structure which relates observable prices to Marxian labour values. The first is that proposed (independently of each other) by Dumenil and Foley (DF); the second in some sense is a generalization which focuses on gross value produced rather than net value added; and a third imposes some temporal structure upon the second approach. The second two approaches are based on different definitions of labour value from that in the DF approach, and in the paper it is argued that the DF approach is both more theoretically coherent and more practically useful