Factor shares: the principal problem of political economy?

This paper identifies three reasons for studying factor shares: to make a link between incomes at the macroeconomic level (national accounts) and incomes at the level of the household; to help understand inequality in the personal distribution of income; and to address the concern of social justice with the fairness of different sources of income. In each case, I explore the implications and point to ways in which the analysis could be taken forward in a twenty-first-century treatment of the classical problem of political economy.