Stefano Perri

The Standard System and the Tendency of the (Maximum) Rate of Profit to Fall — Marx and Sraffa: There and Back

In notes written in the 1940s Sraffa rejected Bortkiewicz’s critique of Marx’s theory of the tendency of the rate of profit tofall. First, he claimed that Marx’s law was logically consistent and not flawed and that Bortkiewicz’s criticism failed to grasp the essential meaning of Marx’s theory, based on the determination of the maximum rate of profit in the economic system. However, Sraffa interpreted technical change that causes an increase in the organic composition of capital as a change that occurs given the technical knowledge available. The substitution of already-invented machinery for labour becomes profitable only when the wage rate increases. On the contrary, according to Sraffa, ‘real’ technological progress is generally neutral and does not involve an increase in the organic composition of capital. This interpretation is very interesting because it stresses the distinction between the analytical and logical aspects on the one hand, and the historical aspect of Marx’s analysis on the other. Second, when writing his notes, Sraffa believed that even in the ‘actual’ economic system the relationship between aggregate income and aggregated capital does not change when the distribution of income varies. This assumption seems to play an important role in Sraffa’s vindication of Marx’s law. Thus the problem arises whether Sraffa’s defence of the logical structure of Marx’s law can be upheld even when this ‘Hypo’ regarding the ratio between aggregate income and aggregate capital is dropped.

From «the Loaf of Bread» to «Commodity-Fetishism»: a ‘New Interpretation’ of the Marx-Sraffa connection

Sraffa’s unpublished papers have attracted again the attention of different scholars on the relationship between Marx’s and Sraffa’s economic theories. In his notes, as far as the theory of value is concerned, Sraffa states that the «delicate point» is the analysis of the relation between the wage rate and the rate of profit when wages partecipate in the distribution of surplus. Sraffa establishes a bridge among the ‘macro’ conception of a given surplus to be divided between the different social classes and the ‘micro’ analysis of the prices of the different commodities by equalizing the value of the net product to the labour employed in its production. From this perspective Sraffa’s analysis can be linked to the ‘New Interpretation’ approach to the transformation of values into prices of production.

When small-sized and non-innovating firms meet a crisis: Evidence from the Italian labour market

The Italian jobs crisis consists of a high percentage of non-working labour force, matched with a high percentage of discouraged, long-term unemployed and inactive population. Not only a sharp deregulation of the job market is groundless, but even a hypothetic return to expansionary fiscal policy would be insufficient in order to solve such structural problems. Starting from the literature dealing with the “Italian decline”, this article demonstrates that the current problems of the Italian labour market are strictly connected to both (post-crisis) fiscal adjustment and pre-existing features of the industrial branch

Methodology, theory and inquiry in Italian economic and social thought: The making of Francesco Coletti

Abstract During the first decades of the twentieth century, Italian economist Francesco Coletti (1866–1940) was recognised as an authority on emigration and agricultural economics. We intend to focus here on Colettis early career to understand how he rapidly managed to secure an enviable reputation. We examine Colettis interventions on economic semiology and measurement of national wealth. We then move on to a series of theoretical debates (notably on Marxs theory of value) to which Coletti made significant contributions. Finally, we survey Colettis fieldwork in agriculture and emigration, topics that allowed for connecting theoretical issues, methodological constraints, and empirical data.

The ‘true’ Francesco Ferrara on exchange and income distribution

Abstract This note proposes a short reconstruction of Ferraras theory of exchange and income distribution as exposed in his La teoria delle mercedi, with the aim of putting the different models developed on the basis of Ferraras interesting example, recently published in the European Journal of the History of Economics, in the context of Ferraras own theory.