Report card on Sraffa at 100

Sraffa is lauded for (a) his magnificent editing of Ricardo's writings and (b) his 1960 classic on Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities. Regretted is the shortfall from his unlimited potential to his sparse bibliography of publications and oral lecturing, and his diffidence as an editor to interpret and criticize his classical heroes. Admired by Keynes and Wittgenstein and friend to the Marxist Antonio Gramsci, Piero was a much loved character. Because of, and not in spite of, the fact that he early lacked sympathy for the general equilibrium methodology and the mixed-economy ideology that dominated twentieth century mainstream economics, Sraffa was able to uniquely add value to the corpus of economic science.     

On the importance of institutions and forms of organisation in Piero Sraffa's economics: the case of business cycles,money, and economic policy

Abstract

This paper is based on an investigation of the Sraffa Archives and tries to characterise Piero Sraffa's approach to business cycles and economic policy. It includes two parts. The first part of the paper shows the importance of economic institutions and social conventions in Sraffa's contribution to economics and their relation with social conflicts. The second part of the paper shows how this importance permits to understand better business cycles and economic policy but also indirectly contributes to a re-interpretation of Sraffa's contribution to economics.     

The interaction between Leontief and Sraffa: No meeting,no citation,no attention?

Abstract

Samuelson often regretted that Leontief and Sraffa never cited each other (true), and seemed to pay no attention to the other's work (false). In the Foley interview Leontief suggested he never met Sraffa (false). Archival evidence shows that in the 1940s Sraffa studied Leontief's classic The Structure of American Economy; he also owned the rare mimeographed supplement, and did some calculations on Leontief's first input–output table. Leontief and Sraffa met in Cambridge (UK) in 1950 and later. In the 1980s Leontief wrote an ambitious empirical paper on technological change, rejected by the AER, and not widely read. It studied some Sraffian topics without Sraffian terminology. I construct a hypothetical reswitching example using Leontief's statistics.     

Shackle on Equilibrium: A Critique

This paper presents a critical evaluation of Shackle's views on economic method. Shackle's arguments against equilibrium analysis are shown to apply to orthodox theory, which has subjectivist foundations, but not to the objectivist classical approach associated with Sraffa. The long-period equilibrium method is indispensable to the analysis of how market societies function. Moreover, since the classical theory contains no trace of the factor substitution mechanisms that underpin neoclassical orthodoxy, its explanations of distribution, employment and outputs must take explicit account of institutions, power and ethical norms. Thus there is no conflict between social economics and the method of the classical economists and Sraffa. On the contrary, the classical approach provides a rigorous framework for the investigation of the very issues that are at the center of institutional and social economics.     

Keynes and Sraffa's 'Difficulties with J. H. Hollander'

The paper reports on Jacob H. Hollander's cooperation with John Maynard Keynes and Piero Sraffa in the preparation of the latter's edition of The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo. The report is based on archive material from various sources, including the unpublished papers of Edwin Cannan, Piero Sraffa, Jacob H. Hollander, John Maynard Keynes, and Jacob Viner, and the archive of the Royal Economic Society. The archive material consulted by us shows that, put mildly, Jacob H. Hollander did not promote Sraffa's editorial project: he held back material which he had received from Frank Ricardo and did not disclose to Sraffa that he owned several important letters which he had privately purchased. Moreover, Sraffa was refused access to Ricardiana even after he had traced them down in laborious detective work to be in Hollander's possession. Hollander's unwillingness to cooperate with Sraffa considerably delayed the publication of the Ricardo edition.     

Contracts,incentives and organizations: Hart and Holmström Nobel Laureates

This article reviews the contribution of Hart and Holmström, the 2016 Nobel Laureates in economics. Holmström's work on the principal-agent problem answered questions as to what should (and should not) be included in an incentive contract. His work helped explain the simple structure of incentive contracts we typically observe in the real world. The models he developed have been used to address questions of CEO compensation, organizational design and optimal regulation. A key element of Hart's research focused on the question of what are the optimal boundaries of a firm (and indeed, what a firm actually is). In doing so he developed the incomplete-contracts framework, which has subsequently been used to explain many economic phenomena whenever renegotiation is important, including authority and decision-making structures in firms, why financial contracts look the way they do, and various questions in international trade and public policy.     

Pigou,Del Vecchio,and Sraffa: the 1955 International “Antonio Feltrinelli” Prize for the Economic and Social Sciences

In 1955, the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei awarded the inaugural International “Feltrinelli” Prize for the Economic and Social Sciences to Arthur Cecil Pigou. This paper considers Gustavo Del Vecchio's active role on the selection committee in recommending Pigou for the Feltrinelli Prize and the related correspondence between Pigou, Piero Sraffa, and Del Vecchio. One of the most significant discovery reported in this paper is Sraffa's contention, expressed in an unpublished letter to Del Vecchio, that Pigou had “never been honoured in proportion to his merits.”     

On the ‘Origins’ of Sraffa’s Production Equations: A Reply to de Vivo

In this rejoinder to de Vivo’s comment on Gehrke and Kurz (2018, ‘Sraffa’s constructive and interpretive work, and Marx.’ Review of Political Economy) we first ask what could possibly be meant by seeking to identify the ‘origins’ of Sraffa’s production equations. We then show that in his comment de Vivo has abandoned his original view, according to which the magnitudes in Sraffa’s ‘first equations’ are to be interpreted in Marxian (labour) value terms, without advising the reader. In addition, we show that his ‘new’ view is not supported by evidence from Sraffa’s papers. De Vivo misconstrues several propositions of Sraffa and misunderstands his ‘reduction method’ by means of which the values of commodities are reduced to some basic product or to labour. The criticisms de Vivo levels at the interpretation advocated by us are without any foundation.