Since no one else has replied, I'll try. I didn't know what you meant by "best source", so I am assuming "authoritative".
Also, I think it is important to keep separate the Classical/Marxian and the Left-Keynesian (although many do not) on this particular issue of propensity to consume. To me, when the classicals (including Kalecki) assume 'workers save zero' this isn't just economy of modeling - it is a simplifying way of presenting a class relationship. When Cambridge adds worker savings in the Kaldor-Pasinetti form they also give it the role of driving the wage-profit distribution - hence a very different view of class relations. (This reminds me of the 'transformation' issues, and that may not be coincidental. Marx is incomplete when not transforming inputs but he may be trying to simplify larger relationships. Often the "corrections" bring in whole different relationships.)
Kalecki Essays in the Theory of Economic Fluctuations, 1939 Ch. 3 "A Theory of Profits", 1942, Economic Journal 52 (207-207)
Kaldor "Alternative Theories of Distribution" 1956, Review of Economic Studies 23(2)
Hahn The Share of Wages in the Trade Cycle", 1950, Economic Journal The Share of Wages in National Income 1951, Oxford Eco Papers 3(2)
Sidney Weintraub An Approach to the Theory of Income Distribution, 1958.
Boulding A Reconstruction of Economics, 1950
I can't give good references for a definitive empirical work (maybe that is telling). Anyone out there? If you come across one pls let me know. Meanwhile in the more mainstream neoclassical Keynesian tradition here is a useful very recent paper by Lawrence Klein that does show the impact of income distribution on propensity to consume over 50 years. <http://www.newschool.edu/cepa/conferences/papers/050415_klein_the-wealth-effect.pdf>
Klein's data analysis can't deal directly with the worker-profit comparison because he uses the Gini coefficient as a measure. So today's income compression among wage earners (the shrinking "middle class") gets mixed in with and partly offsets the growing inequality between wages vs. profit income. Inequality is different than class distinctions. Jamie Galbraith prefers a Theil statistic; I might go for the Atkinson or a Squared Coefficient of Variation.
Hope this helps. Paul
Jim D. writes:
what's the best source (both theoretically and empirically) on the classical/left-Keynesian/Marxian notion that workers have a higher marginal propensity to consume than do property-owners?
