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

Rodolfo Signorino

The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2000, vol. 7, issue 4, 569-594

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Sraffa Marshall Perfect Competition Variable Returns (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2000
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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DOI: 10.1080/09672560050210115

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