Abstract (may include machine translation)
Reviewing the English dition of Professor Zelkó's book „International Value, International Prices“ the author examines the interrelationship between the theory of political economy and economic practice in the field of international price relatives. He questions the validity of the price theory based on the concent of „unified value“ and on the requirenment of the tendency to equality in the gains yielded by international trade. Primarily, because it cannot be proved only illustrated, yet, even the latter is true only under very abstract conditions. The theory becomes especially controversial since in a recent publication Zelkó restates the validity of his model, i. e. under radically changed conditions, however, in virtually unrevised form. Thus, his theory gives little insight into the causes, tendencies and scope of world economic events, and especially of relative prices. As far as the economic nature of CMEA prices and their relation to comporative advantages is concerned, consequences drawn directly (without necessary modifications) from the theoretical model, in economic terms, are unjustified and practically misleading. In spite of the above listed doubts Zelkó's book is a considerable step forward from the traditional approach of political economy. An attempt, up till now unmatched in its complexity on the way to build a marxian theory of international prices.
Translated title of the contribution | Political economics and the world economy |
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Original language | Hungarian |
Pages (from-to) | 133-146 |
Number of pages | 14 |
Journal | Egyetemi Szemle |
Volume | 4 |
Issue number | 1-2 |
State | Published - 1982 |