The Cambridge Critique and Professor Schefold: Some Clarifications on the Remaining Disagreements

Fabio Petri

No CSWP75, Centro Sraffa Working Papers from Centro di Ricerche e Documentazione 'Piero Sraffa'

Abstract: This is a rejoinder to professor Schefold’s 2022 reply to my 2021–2022 criticism of his views on what is left of the Cambridge critique of neoclassical capital theory. I concentrate on the main disagreements. I find Schefold’s reply unconvincing on the usefulness of aggregate production functions, and also on the empirical evidence of a rarity of reswitching. I clarify better than in 2022 my reasons for rejecting his a priori approach to the probability of double switching. I insist that the impossibility to determine the endowment of capital destroys the neoclassical labour demand curve and the neoclassical investment function, leaving real wages and employment in need of a different theory, which renders a turn to a classical-Keynesian approach inevitable.

Keywords: capital theory; Cambridge controversy; reswitching; aggregate production function (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B51 D24 D50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23
Date: 2025-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hpe
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.centrosraffa.org/public/2c1f5750-ab16-4a43-803f-8128b966d5b9.pdf Full text

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ris:sraffa:022047

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Centro Sraffa Working Papers from Centro di Ricerche e Documentazione 'Piero Sraffa' Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Daria Pignalosa ().