Elasticity of substitution and social conflict: a structuralist note on Piketty’sCapital in the Twenty-first Century
从结构主义视角分析资本与劳动替代弹性，解释其波动原因，并基于工资份额与就业率的动态模型，检验皮凯蒂关于功能性收入分配非稳态的命题。
This paper presents a structuralist analysis of the elasticity of substitution between capital and labour, with an application to the US economy. The paper shows how the elasticity of substitution is an aggregated residual parameter, as well as how fluctuations of it can be explained in terms of technological, distributive, demographic and demand shocks. Then, based on a 2×2 dynamical model for the wage share of income and the employment rate, the paper analyses Thomas Piketty’s theoretical proposition that the functional distribution of income may not be stationary.