Search results

This chapter aims at making clear growth and distribution of China’s economy 1987–2000 with fixed capital on the input-output table basis. Since fixed capital data are not sufficiently available, one has to estimate fixed capital coefficients. In the outset, this chapter outlines the Sraffa–Fujimori method, which simulates the maximum growth path and estimates the marginal fixed capital coefficients on that path. In the second place, the marginal fixed capital coefficients of China’s economy are estimated. In the third place, the wage-profit curves of China’s economy will be drawn, and we discuss some further features obtained by our observations.

In the current literature, there is little systematic research on the relationship among adjustment of the income distribution, change in economic structure and improvement of macroeconomic efficiency.

This paper expands Marx's reproduction schema into the “Marx–Sraffa” three-department structure table comprising fixed capital, general means of production and means of consumption and employs China's input–output table from 1987 to 2015 to portray the relationship between income distribution and macroeconomic efficiency under investment-driven growth.

This paper calculates the wage–profit curve of China's economy and evaluates the space of macroeconomic efficiency improvement in China based on the deviation between actual and potential income distribution structure.

The results show that there is a downward trend of the profit rate, which meets Marx's theoretical prediction, and the decline in the profit rate is mainly attributed to an increase in the organic composition of capital arising from the rapid growth of fixed capital investment under extended growth. The analysis of macroeconomic efficiency shows that the space for improving macroeconomic efficiency is extremely limited under traditional growth pattern and that China must transform its economic development pattern and foster new economic growth drivers.

This chapter argues that the Marxian theory of exploitation underlies the concepts of surplus and deficit industries that appear in Sraffa’s (1960) Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities. This is seen from archival research of the unpublished papers of Piero Sraffa housed at the Wren Library, Trinity College, University of Cambridge. There it is shown that the origin of these concepts lies in the Marxian theory of exploitation that Sraffa developed regarding the notion of the ‘pool of profits’ the Italian economist utilized over a 14-year period from 1942 to 1956. The chapter engages in an extensive textual study of the archival evidence and then presents a simple analytical model of these relations.

This essay explores certain aspects of single product industry basic systems of the type Sraffa develops in Part I of Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities. It focusses on triangular trade as the simplest expression of the more general n-commodity case. Two elements of the framework are explored: (i) the relation of exchange between all commodities, conceived as the configuration of exchange which is applicable to the subsistence and surplus models, and (ii) the value/price expressions of labour time, applicable to the surplus model only, which posits the productivity of, remuneration to and extraction from living labour added to the system. This analysis complements and extends the Marxian reading of Sraffa’s notions of surplus and deficit industries first explored in Carter (2014b). The methodology of ‘given quantities’ in expositing the relations developed is adopted in this essay as it corresponds to the same method employed by Sraffa. This allows readers to easily move from the present essay to Sraffa’s book and importantly his archival notes which are now for all interested parties available as colour digital images on the Wren Library website.

The first part of this article focuses on Roncaglia’s presentation of Piero Sraffa’s work and its significance for economic theory. The second part takes up some issues of content, method and interpretation of this work. It is argued that Sraffa must be put into a wider context to link him with Keynes. Sraffa and Keynes constitute the basis for elaborating a classical‐Keynesian system of political economy on a platform provided by Pasinetti’s vertically integrated labour model.

Resurgent interest in the life and work of the Italian Cambridge economist Piero Sraffa is leading to New Directions in Sraffa Scholarship. This chapter introduces readers to some of these developments. First and perhaps foremost is the fact that as of September 2016 Sraffa’s archival material has been uploaded onto the website of the Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge University, as digital colour images; this chapter introduces readers to the history of these events. This history provides sharp relief on the extant debates over the role of the archival material in leading to the final publication of Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities, and readers are provided a brief sketch of these matters. The varied nature of Sraffa scholarship is demonstrated by the different aspects of Sraffa’s intellectual legacy which are developed and discussed in the various entries of our Symposium. The conclusion is reached that we are on the cusp of an exciting phase change of tremendous potential in Sraffa scholarship.

These two books reflect very different attitudes to classical economics: O'Brien writes from a neoclassical standpoint, Napoleoni from a Marxist one. Two questions deserve consideration. Is anything worthwhile to be gained by devoting attention to the works of the classical economists (and of Marx)? Where, if we do turn to the classics, do they lead us?

Based on Geoffrey Harcourt's Palgrave volumes, this review article attempts to picture how, in a Cambridge environment, Keynes's fragmentary monetary theory of production grew organically out of Marshall's equally fragmentary monetary theory of exchange. The dangers associated with Keynes's close links with Marshall are alluded to. Indeed, without taking account of the classical spirit of Sraffa's work, Keynes's monetary theory may quite easily be integrated into the Marshallian‐neoclassical framework of analysis. However, theorising, not literally, but in the spirit of Keynes and Sraffa, within a Ricardian‐Pasinettian framework of vertical integration, opens the way to a Classical‐Keynesian monetary theory of production.