ABSTRACT
One general growth model encapsulates a variety of classical perspectives on the secular path of wages. The common features of the model utilized by Ricardo, Malthus and Mill are land scarcity manifested in diminishing agricultural returns at least beyond a certain labour-land ratio, and a positive functional relation between the return on capital (r) and the capital growth rate (g/k). There are minor differences only between Ricardo and Malthus concerning the relation between the labour growth rate (gL.) and the wage (w). For Ricardo gL is irresponsive to wage reductions except at levels close to subsistence, whereas Malthus allowed a regular (positive) gL-w relationship. But this difference is not a substantive one, and in each version the outcome of the growth process is a downward path of wages until the subsistence level (ws)where g/. (as well as gk) has fallen to zero. A substantive difference between the two is that for Ricardo wage movements result from deviations between the factor growth rates, while Malthus posits a declining wage path notwithstanding equality of the factor growth rates – i.e. his constitutes a ‘dynamic equilibrium’ path.
