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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Method and analysis in Piero Sraffa's 1925 critique of Marshallian economics

Rodolfo Signorino

subject

Value theoryVariable (computer science)History and Philosophy of ScienceSettore SECS-P/04 - Storia Del Pensiero EconomicoGeneral Arts and HumanitiesPartial equilibriumEconomics Econometrics and Finance (miscellaneous)EconomicsCriticismSupply sideNeoclassical economicsMarshallian economics perfect competition laws of returnsMathematical economics

description

This paper provides an analysis of the logical structure and analytical content of Piero Sraffa's 1925 Italian paper, ‘Sulle relazioni fra costo e quantita prodotta’. It shows that Sraffa's criticism of the supply side of Marshall's theory of value in a competitive partial equilibrium model involves analytical and methodological issues. Endorsing an agressive methodology Sraffa logically reconstructs Marshall's model on variable returns to determine its empirical domain. He demonstrates that the latter encompasses only the empirically irrelevant cases of specific factor industries and specific external economies industries and that it cannot be generalized to non-specific factor industries and to non-specific external economies industries.

yearjournalcountryeditionlanguage
2000-12-01
http://hdl.handle.net/10447/46388