The Ricardian rent theory: an overview

Christian Bidard

No CSWP8, Centro Sraffa Working Papers from Centro di Ricerche e Documentazione "Piero Sraffa"

Abstract: We propose to re-read Ricardo's theory of rent to which, we claim, the post-Sraffian literature is methodologically unfaithful. Ricardo's dynamic approach follows the transformations of a long-term equilibrium with demand. Sraffa adopted the same framework while substituting a value criterion for a physical criterion to determine the incoming marginal method, but he did not state the law of succession of methods explicitly. This prevented him to realize that his critique to Ricardo opens the door to all complications of capital theory, with the consequence that the Ricardian dynamics fail when a divergence appears between profitability and productivity. Contemporary studies have cast doubts on the validity of some of Ricardo's and Sraffa's over-optimistic conclusions, but the abandonment of the dynamic approach does not allow them to explain the ultimate reason of the phenomena they have pointed at Ricardo's method has been recently rediscovered by mathematicians.

Keywords: Classical theory; land; rent; Ricardo; Sraffa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B12 B51 C61 D33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2014-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-hme and nep-hpe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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