Annalisa Rosselli

Sraffa and the Marshallian tradition

Abstract The paper retraces some of the stages in Sraffas thinking about the work of Marshall, by drawing on unpublished material in the Sraffa archive from 1923 to 1930. It argues that Sraffa transformed his dissent – which was based on ideological grounds – into a ‘quest for the fatal error’ to demolish the logical construction of Marshallian theory. Some of his attacks were successful (for example, the critique of the relation between costs and output); other attempts failed (the critique of the ‘normal rate of profit’ and the critique of the concept of marginal productivity) since Sraffa could not find enough textual evidence to support his position.

Speculation and buffer stocks: The legacy of Keynes and Kahn

Abstract We review Keyness constant concern with commodity prices, both as speculator and as theorist, arguing that it was never divorced from his view on market instability. We also look at Kahns contribution on buffer stocks, which brought to fruition the original intuition by Keynes, refining it with his usual attention to the finest details. Finally, we will draw some general considerations on the relevance of the proposals of stabilization of commodity prices, based on buffer stocks, in the present sentiment of ‘a return to Keynes’ in the attempt to cope with possibly the worst global economic crisis since the 1930s.

Economists in Cambridge : a study through their correspondence, 1907-1946

The University of Cambridge has produced more Nobel Prize-winning economists than the whole of France. This impressive book collects together largely unpublished correspondence from some of the twentieth centurys key figures including Keynes, Robinson, Hayek and Sraffa.

Early Views on Monetary Policy: The Neapolitan Debate on the Theory of Exchange

e Istituzioni, Facolta di Economia, Via Tor Vergata, 00133 Roma, Italy; e-mail: Annalisa. Rosselli@uniroma2.it. I wish to thank an anonymous referee for helpful comments and suggestions. An earlier version of this article was published, in Italian, in Alle origini del pensiero economico in Italia: Moneta e sviluppo negli economisti napoletani dei secoli XVII–XVIII, edited by Alessandro Roncaglia (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1995). Early Views on Monetary Policy: The Neapolitan Debate on the Theory of Exchange

Monetary standards and exchange rates

In this volume an international team of distinguished monetary historians examine the historical experience of exchange rate behaviour under different monetary regimes. The main focus is on metallic standards and fixed exchange rates, such as the gold standard. With its combination of thematic overviews and case studies of the key countries and periods, the book greatly enhances our understanding of past monetary systems.

Economic history and history of economics: In praise of an old relationship

Abstract This paper argues against the distance which has been growing between economic history and history of economic thought (HET). Two examples, drawn from the history of monetary theory, are provided of how neglecting the historical background may lead to erroneous interpretations and prevent a correct assessment of the position that a work occupies in the HET. The first relates to the interpretation of Ricardos theory of money. The second discusses the so-called inconsistencies between metallist and cartalist positions that can be detected in many pre-Smithian writers on money.

RICHARD KAHN AND THE STABILIZATION OF COMMODITY PRICES

This paper reconstructs an important and little-known part of the activity of Richard Kahn in the 1950s, both as researcher and as policy advisor, which centered on the drafting of a book for the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations). Never actually published by the FAO for reasons clarified in this paper, the book dealt with fluctuations in the prices of primary products and how best to curb them. Offering a novel development of an idea first proposed by John Maynard Keynes, Kahn advocates the creation of buffer stocks managed by a supranational authority endowed with ample discretionary powers. The paper presents a complete reconstruction of Kahn’s views on the advantages of buffer stocks as an instrument to stabilize commodity prices, of the context in which these views took shape, and of the way they tied in with other parts of his economic theory and were reflected in his assessment of the commodity international agreements of the time to limit fluctuations in the prices of primary products. It thus fills a significant gap in our knowledge of one of the great economists of the twentieth century.

Richard F. Kahn (1905–1989)

Richard Kahn made contributions which secured him a prominent place in the history of economics in three areas: imperfect competition, the theory of employment, and monetary and international economics. He was among the inventors of the ‘kinked demand curve’, having introduced ‘conjectures’ into demand curves, in the form of elasticity values, for the analysis of price and quantity produced in oligopolistic markets. He was a major protagonist in the Keynesian revolution, his most famous contribution being undoubtedly the ‘multiplier’. But Kahn contributed also to the approach taken by Keynes, by extending the Marshallian supply and demand apparatus from the analysis of one single market to the economy as a whole. His approach to the liquidity preference theory was perhaps more radical than Keynes’s. To the end of his life, Kahn dedicated his efforts as a theoretical economist, academic, and member of the House of Lords to demolishing the ‘mystique’ of monetarism and building an alternative institutional framework on ‘Keynesian’ foundations for domestic and international policy.

The Return to Keynes

ing in the production process, but benefits at the expense of the economy as a whole. The leitmotif of the final chapter—put simply, to save the concrete from the abstract, in particular when expressed in such personalized terms as ‘the financial capitalist’—leaves a flank open to regressive critiques of capitalism. A more extensive discussion of Weeks’ analysis would merit a closer examination of what he considers to be the central insight of Marx’s labor theory of value: ‘in capitalism things are not as they appear’ (p. 2). According to this view, the thrust of Marx’s analysis is to demystify the capitalist mode of production by revealing the true source of social wealth and the actual social relations beneath the appearances of the exchange of equivalents. This interpretation, which has been referred to as traditional Marxism (Postone, 1993), does not adequately capture Marx’s argument about the intrinsic connection between the forms of mystification and their content, which is central to his critique of political economy. The fetishistic character of the commodity form is the necessarily inverted appearance of an essence it both expresses and veils. Given this understanding of Marx’s knowledge claims, the quasi-objective, impersonal social forms expressed by categories such as the commodity and value do not simply conceal the actual social relations in capitalist economies; rather, the abstractions expressed by those categories are the real social relations.