No capítulo intitulado "Class, Gender and Other Groups" do famoso livro "Inequality Reexamined", Amartya Sen (1992) discorre um pouco sobre um velho debate na história do pensamento econômico: quem afinal foi responsável pela produção? E quem merece receber a remuneração advinda dessa produção? Segundo Sen: Production is an interdependent process involving a joint use of many resources, and there is in general no clear way of deciding which resource has produced what. The concept of 'marginal product' of a resource is not really concerned with who has 'actually produced' what, but with guiding the allocation of resources by examining what would happen if one more unit of a resource were to be used (given all the other resources). To read in that counterfactual marginal story (what would happen if one more unit were applied, given everything else) an identification of who has 'in fact' produced what in the total output is to take the margin...
Oikomania: Reflexões em História Econômica, Desenvolvimento e Filosofia Política