Nobuo Okishio

About Nobuo Okishio

Nobuo Okishio (置塩 信雄; January 2, 1927 – November 13, 2003) was a Japanese Marxian economist and emeritus professor of Kobe University. In 1979, he was elected President of the Japan Association of Economics and Econometrics, which is now called Japanese Economic Association. Okishio studied mathematical economics under Kazuo Mizutani. In 1950 he graduated from Kobe University and later taught there. He soon began to doubt the premises and results of modern economics, and decided to search for alternatives by studying Marxian economics. Okishio worked to clarify the logic of Karl Marx’s economic system, offering formal and mathematical proofs for many Marxian theorems. For example, in 1955, he gave the world's first proof of the “Marxian fundamental theorem”, as it was later named by Michio Morishima, which is the theory that the exploitation of surplus labor is the necessary condition for the existence of positive profit.