Re: Economic Rent As Sum of Externalities

On Thu, 31 May 2007 06:43:39 GMT, royls@xxxxxxxxx in sci.econ
confessed to the world saying:
On Thu, 31 May 2007 00:02:00 GMT, jmh <jmhall@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Wed, 30 May 2007 03:55:36 GMT, royls@xxxxxxxxx in sci.econ
confessed to the world saying:
On 29 May 2007 09:47:29 -0700, "James A. Bowery" <jabowery@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

On May 29, 9:18 am, r...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
Could you explain why you want to prevent people from thinking about
economic rent?

I'm on your side.

Well, I don't see how linking rent with externalities helps "my" side.
Neoclassical economists have tried to prevent people from thinking
about economic rent by redefining it according to the _amount_ of
return obtained rather than the _source_ of that return. Attributing
rent to externalities rather than privileges has a similar effect:
directing attention away from the fact that rent is the share of
production that is obtained in return for not blocking producers'
access to production opportunities that would otherwise have been
accessible.

Odd that Smith doesn't seem to define rent that way. I guess
he's not a classical economist.

?? He uses somewhat different words, of course, and rent in those
days meant only the return to land, and did not include the return to
what has become known as rent seeking. But with those caveats, Smith
clearly did identify rent very much as I have.

Roy, if that's the case, please get the passages from Smith
where he's suggesting we eliminate private land ownership.

My point was his emphasis was not really on the ability of
landlords to control who can access their property but that
a) rent is the term for payment to the land input (just like
wage is payment to labor input and profit payment to
capital input) and b) motivations of landlords was not
much different than the other factor owners and c) not
entirely immune to the market processes (competition)
that also forced other factor owners to settle for a more
socially desirable outcome.

Your definition of rent is colored by your view that
land should not be owned privately. To a certain extent
the issue of private land ownership and land rent are
orthogonal.


jmh


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Land, Labour and Capital Taxation....
    ... >>Land value is not rent. ... MArket value is not rent. ... THE MARKET DOES NOT CALCULATE ECONOMIC RENT. ...
    (sci.econ)
  • Re: Profit versus Interest
    ... Profit is the return from all factors in production. ... Ricardian rents are not the only land rents. ... minor slip of the pen where he infers that rent is a sort of profit. ... It is also economic rent and it is often Ricardian ...
    (sci.econ)
  • Re: Relative Appropriation of Economic Rents
    ... Land does not "appropriate" rent or anything else ... without development, and that requires investment. ... Then you agree that landowners appropriate economic rent when there's ...
    (sci.econ)
  • Re: LVT and value
    ... externalities of their work (either the rent of land, ... Is the LVT (Land Value Tax) rooted in the LTV, ... Rent sharing is simply a way to equalize land use opportunity via prevailing values of location specific labor savings. ...
    (sci.econ)
  • Re: Land, Labour and Capital Taxation....
    ... >Impossible you still do not understand what economic rent means. ... people will only use 0 rent land if it is marginal land. ... No, it will not sell for a positive price, because the owner will not ...
    (sci.econ)