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Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is a linear programming technique that can be used to evaluate or benchmark the performance of different businesses, non-profit organizations, public sector agencies, and even national economies. DEA can compare these or any set of entities called decision-making units (DMUs) according to how well they minimize inputs in order to maximize output(s), or, in other words, evaluate the DMUs according to how efficient they are. This article uses DEA to compare and contrast 15 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations according to how efficiently they attained their national output levels through capital and labor inputs minimization at the peak of the last business cycle in 2007. Next, these efficiency scores as well as other measures of the income shares or returns to labor and capital for each economy are used in order to see if there is some type of support for an aggregate, economy-wide productivity theory of distribution. Although different measures of productivity have been used at aggregate levels to one degree or another to predict payments to factor inputs in order to assess marginal and average productivity theory, the research done for this article has not found any other works that have used DEA, and so this article seeks to make a new and perhaps unique empirical contribution to the literature on aggregate productivity theories of labor and capital income distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two important concepts in the Marxist and Neo-Marxist literature are surplus value (S/V) and the profit to wage (P-W) ratio. It has always been understood that these variables are related to the levels of unemployment/underemployment, poverty, and inequality within a society, but there have been no explicit and empirical attempts to link these variables together. This article demonstrates that the variables S/V and P-W are good predictors of the level of inequality within the economies of OECD nations over the last few decades [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an empirical note that links measures of macroeconomic efficiency constructed through data envelopment analysis (DEA) with measures of inequality, poverty, as well as government debt, welfare spending, taxation and unionization in OECD nations from the last decade. In the course of minimizing the amounts of resources or inputs necessary to generate an optimal amount of GDP, those nations which are the most efficient in resource allocation and input minimization are also hypothesized to be those with higher levels of poverty and inequality yet lower levels of government spending and debt, tax revenues, and unionization, all else held constant. Much has been written about how market efficiency is either compatible or incompatible with these variables, and this article tries to offer more evidence by looking at how DEA measures of economic efficiency either correlate or do not correlate with them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several recent editions of major mainstream economics textbooks list various causes of the 2007-09 global recession (also known as the "Great Recession"), which mostly include the following factors: lower mortgage lending standards, central banks keeping interest rates low, consumers borrowing too much money because of rising home prices, government agencies and policies encouraging home ownership and encouraging lenders to take on more risk, and a glut of savings from China and developing nations which fueled investments, current account deficits, and speculation in various global markets, especially US mortgage backed securities. These in turn drove up home prices in the United States and elsewhere and helped to fuel a rise in consumer debt in many nations. Meanwhile, this article's research has found that some heterodox economists and heterodox publications have raised these issues in addition to the issues of stagnant or falling wages/income and the growth of the financial, insurance and real estate sectors of most advanced capitalist nations as possible causes for the increase in consumer debt prior to the Great Recession. These last two factors, however, are mostly ignored in mainstream writings. To compare the validity of the claims of mainstream and heterodox views, econometric analysis is employed using data from the last two decades from Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations. The heterodox and radical views seem to have some statistical support on their side and probably should not be ignored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]