Piero Sraffa

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Piero Sraffa bigraphy, stories - Italian economist

Piero Sraffa : biography

August 5, 1898 – September 3, 1983

Piero Sraffa (5 August 1898 – 3 September 1983) was an influential Italian economist whose book Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities is taken as founding the Neo-Ricardian school of Economics.

Major works

In 1927, Sraffa’s yet undiscussed theory of value,The participants of the Symposium 1930 in the Economic Journal were more concerned with how increasing returns can be made compatible with competition than with what are the consequences of increasing returns in the real world. Hicks (1939, The Foundations of Welfare Economics, pp. 696 – 712 in Economic Journal, IL, December 1939) concluded that Sraffa’s view has destructive consequences for the major part of economic theory. but also his friendship with Antonio Gramsci, a risky and compromising endeavor in the context of the Italian fascist regime, considering Gramsci had previously been imprisoned, (Sraffa had brought him the material, literally pens and paper, with which Gramsci would write his Prison Notebooks), brought John Maynard Keynes to prudently invite Sraffa to the University of Cambridge, where the Italian economist was initially assigned a lectureship.

That Sraffa hated lecturing is normally explained by his shyness. But perhaps he declined teaching an economic theory he found wanting. So, he stopped collaborating in the making of Keynes’ General Theory as Keynes used a subjective propensity to consume. After a few years, Keynes created ex novo for Sraffa the charge of Marshall Librarian.

Sraffa joined the so-called "cafeteria group", together with Frank P. Ramsey and Ludwig Wittgenstein, a sort of informal club that discussed Keynes’s theory of probability and Friedrich Hayek’s theory on business cycles. In 1939, Sraffa was elected to a Fellowship at Trinity College..

Ricardo’s works and correspondence

John Eatwell wrote of Sraffa’s work on Ricardo:

[Sraffa’s] reconstruction of Ricardo’s surplus theory, presented in but a few pages of the introduction to his edition of Ricardo’s Principles, penetrated a hundred years of misunderstanding and distortion to create a vivid rationale for the structure and content of surplus theory, for the analytical role of the labor theory of value, and hence for the foundations of Marx’s critical analysis of capitalist production.John Eatwell (1984). "Piero Sraffa: Seminal Economic Theorist." Science and Society, 48(2), pp 211-216. Reprinted in Piero Sraffa: Critical Assessments, J. Wood J. C. Wood, 1995, v. 1, pp.

Sraffian economics

Sraffa’s Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities was an attempt to perfect Classical Economics’ theory of value, as originally developed by David Ricardo and others. He aimed to demonstrate flaws in the mainstream neoclassical theory of value and develop an alternative analysis. In particular, Sraffa’s technique of aggregating capital as "dated inputs of labour" led to a famous scholarly debate known as the Cambridge capital controversy.

Economists disagree on whether Sraffa’s work refutes neoclassical economics. Many post-Keynesian economists use Sraffa’s critique as justification for abandoning neoclassical analysis and exploring other models of economic behavior. Others see his work as compatible with neoclassical economics, as developed in modern general equilibrium models, or unable to determine a long-period position, just like the Walrasian approach.Fabio D’Orlando (2005). "Will the Classical-type Approach Survive Sraffian Theory?", in Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, 27(4), pp. 633-654

Nonetheless, Sraffa’s work, and particularly his interpretation of Ricardo and his Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities (1960), is seen as the starting point of the Neo-Ricardian school in the 1960s. His approach there has been described as serving "to help judge Ricardo’s editor and to illuminate the unity in [his] scientific vision, from before 1926 until death in 1983."Paul A. Samuelson ([1987] 2008). "Sraffian economics." The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics 2nd Edition. * John Eatwell and Carlo Panico (1987 [2008]). "Sraffa, Piero." The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, v. 3, pp. 445–52.