Accumulation, capacity utilisation and distribution

This paper examines three approaches to the process of accumulation which are based on the ‘Keynesian premise’: the ʼneo-Keynesian’, the ‘Kaleckian’ and the ‘Sraffian’. Making some criticisms of the first two from the viewpoint of the third and from a certain formal/conceptual perspective, we propose a synthetic model which is free from these criticisms and in which the adjustment of savings to investment in the long period is achieved through all the three routes emphasised separately by these approaches: changes in the long-period degree of utilisation; changes in the ʼnormal’ distribution of income; and variations in the size of productive capacity. The key to the synthesis is the hypothesis that, in the long period, the ʼnormal’ degree of utilisation is endogenously determined to coincide with the average level through mutual influence effected by investment in the short period. Our synthetic model, like the first two approaches, is in the line of steady-state analysis, but in a way compatible with the ‘Keynesian premise’.