Home > GIWP > Vol. 1 (2001)
Article Title
Abstract
Total return economics (TRE) is a new look at economic basics. It takes prediction of behavior as its objective, and reasons toward this objective from definitions in principle to definitions and inferences in practice. It finds for example that output, if defined in principle as creation of economic value, is implicitly total return or the sum of growth and yield. Likewise capital, if defined in principle as a store enabling future taste satisfactions, is implicitly the integral of the present value of those expected satisfactions time-discounted at the output rate (rate of return) at which it is expected to produce them. Although these algorithms are well-established for physical capital ("property" in TRE), TRE reasons that they are also tautologies or logical certitudes which apply equally to human capital (here called "self-value"). This unusual approach yields surprises. Economists will be interested in its findings, for example, that: · output is not consumption plus investment; · the value of a worker's output sold to his employer is less than half his pay; · rate of return is not zero but several percent per year in the stationary state; and belt-tightening has little effect on overall growth.
Recommended Citation
Getty, Gordon P.
(2001)
"Total Return Economics,"
The Gruter Institute Working Papers on Law, Economics, and Evolutionary Biology:
Vol. 1, Article 1.
Available at:
https://services.bepress.com/giwp/vol1/iss1/art1