Abstract:

This paper builds upon Shaikh's analysis based on the national income identity by introducing the wage-profit rate curve, and derives the duality of total factor productivity (TFP, or Solow residual) in terms of technology and distribution. That is to say,TFP is not only a reflection of production efficiency but also influenced by income distribution. Through decomposition, it is found that the labor-capital distribution mainly affects the overall level of TFP, but has a relatively small impact on the changes in TFP. Changes in TFP can reflect improvements in economic efficiency. However, due to differences in types of technological progress and labor-capital distribution among countries, it is not appropriate to make horizontal comparisons across countries. Finally, by integrating the technological factors that determine TFP, this paper finds that China generally exhibits a Marx-biased type of technological progress, characterized by increasing labor productivity and decreasing capital productivity. However, the process behind the technological changes does not conform to the mechanism of Marx-biased technological change. This is because China's technological progress had primarily focused on the introduction and absorption of Western technologies, reflecting the path of technological progress in Western countries. Therefore, in the process of independent innovation, we need to balance the production efficiency of labor and means of production, develop a new type of productive forces, and achieve sustained improvement in TFP. 

Key words:

total factor productivity, technology-distribution duality, Marxist