Classical Economics Today

Description

A collection of original essays by leading Classical economists in honor of Alessandro Roncaglia.

Classical Economics Today: Essays in Honor of Alessandro Roncaglia is a collection of essays that pays tribute to Alessandro Roncaglia whose research is based on Schumpeter’s dictum that good economics must encompass history, economic theory and statistics, and therefore does not generally take the form of elegant formal models that are applicable to all and everything. In this direction, Roncaglia is inspired by the Classical economists of the past and becomes a model for present-day Classical economists. A perceptible family air imbues the essays: all the contributors are friends of Roncaglia and see his personality and his interests as a common point of reference.

List of Illustrations; Preface; Acknowledgments; Chapter One The Reconstruction of an Alternative EconomicThought: Some Premises, Salvatore Biasco; Chapter Two Reflections on Unity and Diversity, the Market and Economic Policy, Jan Kregel; Chapter Three Ending Laissez- Faire Finance, Mario Tonveronachi; Chapter Four Democracy in Crisis: So What’s New?, Michele Salvati; Chapter Five The Democracy of Ideas: J. S. Mill, Liberalism and the Economic Debate, Marcella Corsi and Carlo D’Ippoliti; Chapter Six Turgot and the Division of Labor, Peter Groenewegen; Chapter Seven Agricultural Surplus and the Means of Production, Gianni Vaggi; Chapter Eight The Role of Sraffa Prices in Post- Keynesian Pricing Theory, Geoffrey Harcourt; Chapter Nine Classical Underconsumption Theories Reassessed, Cosimo Perrotta; Chapter Ten On the “Photograph” Interpretation of Piero Sraffa’s Production Equations: A View from the Sraffa Archive, Heinz D. Kurz and Neri Salvadori; Chapter Eleven On the Earliest Formulations of Sraffa’s Equations, Nerio Naldi; Chapter Twelve Normal and Degenerate Solutions of the Walras- Morishima Model, Bertram Schefold; Chapter Thirteen Trading in the “Devil’s Metal”: Keynes’s Speculation and Investment in Tin (1921– 46) 167, Maria Cristina Marcuzzo and Annalisa Rosselli; Chapter Fourteen The Oil Question, the Prices of Production and a Metaphor, Sergio Parrinello; Chapter Fifteen Europe and Italy: Expansionary Austerity and Expansionary Precariousness, Davide Antonioli and Paolo Pini; Chapter Sixteen Adam Smith and the Neophysiocrats: War of Ideas in Spain (1800– 4), Alfonso Sánchez Hormigo; Bibliography; List of Contributors; Index.

Sujets

• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Economic policy
• Public policy
• Theory
• Economics

Informations

• Publié par: Anthem Press
• Date de parution: 22 janvier 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783087525
• Langue: English

Extrait

Classical Economics Today
ANTHEM OTHER CANON ECONOMICS
The Anthem Other Canon Economics series is a collaboration between Anthem Press and The Other Canon Foundation. The Other Canon—also described as “reality economics”—studies the economy as a real object rather than as the behavior of a model economy based on core axioms, assumptions and techniques. The series includes both classical and contemporary works in this tradition, spanning evolutionary, institutional and post-Keynesian economics, the history of economic thought and economic policy, economic sociology and technology governance, and works on the theory of uneven development and in the tradition of the German historical school.
Series Editors
Erik S. Reinert—Chairman, The Other Canon Foundation, Norway and Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia
Rainer Kattel—Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia
Wolfgang Drechsler—Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia
Editorial Board
Ha-Joon Chang—University of Cambridge, UK
Mario Cimoli—UN-ECLAC, Chile
Jayati Ghosh—Jawaharlal Nehru University, India
Steven Kaplan—Cornell University, USA, and University of Versailles, France
Jan Kregel—Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, USA, and Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia
Bengt-Åke Lundvall—Aalborg University, Denmark
Richard Nelson—Columbia University, USA
Keith Nurse—University of the West Indies, Barbados
Patrick O’Brien—London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), UK
Carlota Perez—London School of Economics, Technological University of Tallinn, Estonia; Research Affiliate, and SPRU, Science and Technology Policy Research, School of Business, Management and Economics, University of Sussex, UK
Alessandro Roncaglia—Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
Jomo Kwame Sundaram—Tun Hussein Onn Chair in International Studies, Institute of Strategic and International Studies Malaysia
Classical Economics Today
Essays in Honor of Alessandro Roncaglia
Edited by
Marcella Corsi, Jan Kregel and Carlo D’Ippoliti
Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com

This edition first published in UK and USA 2018
by ANTHEM PRESS
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© 2018 Marcella Corsi, Jan Kregel and Carlo D’Ippoliti editorial matter and selection;
individual chapters © individual contributors

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All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN-13: 978-1-78308-750-1 (Hbk)
ISBN-10: 1-78308-750-1 (Hbk)

This title is also available as an e-book.
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations

Preface

Acknowledgments
Chapter One
The Reconstruction of an Alternative Economic Thought: Some Premises
Salvatore Biasco Chapter Two
Reflections on Unity and Diversity, the Market and Economic Policy
Jan Kregel Chapter Three
Ending Laissez-Faire Finance
Mario Tonveronachi Chapter Four
Democracy in Crisis: So What’s New?
Michele Salvati Chapter Five
The Democracy of Ideas: J. S. Mill, Liberalism and the Economic Debate
Marcella Corsi and Carlo D’Ippoliti Chapter Six
Turgot and the Division of Labor
Peter Groenewegen Chapter Seven
Agricultural Surplus and the Means of Production
Gianni Vaggi Chapter Eight
The Role of Sraffa Prices in Post-Keynesian Pricing Theory
Geoffrey Harcourt Chapter Nine
Classical Underconsumption Theories Reassessed
Cosimo Perrotta Chapter Ten
On the “Photograph” Interpretation of Piero Sraffa’s Production Equations: A View from the Sraffa Archive
Heinz D. Kurz and Neri Salvadori Chapter Eleven
On the Earliest Formulations of Sraffa’s Equations
Nerio Naldi Chapter Twelve
Normal and Degenerate Solutions of the Walras-Morishima Model
Bertram Schefold Chapter Thirteen
Trading in the “Devil’s Metal”: Keynes’s Speculation and Investment in Tin (1921–46)
Maria Cristina Marcuzzo and Annalisa Rosselli Chapter Fourteen
The Oil Question, the Prices of Production and a Metaphor
Sergio Parrinello Chapter Fifteen
Europe and Italy: Expansionary Austerity and Expansionary Precariousness
Davide Antonioli and Paolo Pini Chapter Sixteen
Adam Smith and the Neophysiocrats: War of Ideas in Spain (1800–4)
Alfonso Sánchez Hormigo
Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index
ILLUSTRATIONS
Figures
13.1 Tin shares (£) in Keynes’s portfolio
13.2 Tin prices (£ per ton) and tin shares prices (£ per unit)
13.3 Interlocking directorships and mining agencies in tin industry
15.1a Annual change in labor income share 2000–7
15.1b Annual change in labor income share 2008–15
15.2 Unit labor cost (growth rates)
15.3a Unit labor cost index (Canada, France, Germany, Japan, United States, United Kingdom)
15.3b Unit labor cost index (Italy, Greece, Ireland, Spain)
15.3c Unit labor cost index (Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Poland, Slovak Republic, Slovenia)
15.3d Unit labor cost index (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands, Sweden, Luxembourg)
15.3e Unit labor cost index (Australia, Iceland, Korea, Switzerland, Norway)
Tables
13.1 London standard tin (£ per ton), monthly average price
13.2 LME tin turnovers (000 tons)
13.3 Number of operations in tin futures and options made by Keynes
13.4 Keynes’s total profits and losses in tin derivatives (£)
13.5 Keynes’s holdings of tin shares
13.6 Dividends distributed by some tin companies in Malaya from their foundation to 1951
PREFACE
This collection of essays provides a tribute to Alessandro Roncaglia, one of the most important representatives of what has come to be a threatened species: the classical political economist.
His work has provided insight into the joint journey of economic theory with economic history and its application to economic policy related to both the past and the present problems of an evolving economy.
While economic history serves the classical economist as insight into the diverse theoretical development underpinning of economic policy debates, the focus is always on the objective of understanding the economy in which he/she lives and works. The classical economist is thus bound to think that economic theory is “historically conditioned” (Sylos Labini, 2005 ): as social systems evolve, the appropriate theory to represent a certain phenomenon must evolve too. Therefore, plurality in methods, including history of economic thought, must be a deliberate choice.
As Salvatore Biasco stresses in his contribution to this volume,

At the base of a nonmainstream way of looking at the economy, from a descriptive and normative perspective, cannot be but social complexity, uncertainty and innovative dynamics. Through these lenses, the aggregate behaviour of the economy is studied as determined by constantly evolving endogenous events, which are fed by a number of driving forces: unstable and potentially explosive relationships; nondeterministic developments; a financial system closely interconnected to the real economy but also able to acquire an autonomous dimension; and a social dynamic that changes in parallel to the whole process and that at the same time affects it.
These contributions in honor of Roncaglia’s work follow in this tradition, dealing with themes that have characterized his work or that represent expressions of his personality, his interests and method. Geoffrey Harcourt, Heinz Kurz, Nerio Naldi and Neri Salvadori all deal with one of Roncaglia’s major contributions to classical economics, that is, the presentation, interpretation and extension of Piero Sraffa’s work on the classical theory of prices. Marcella Corsi, Carlo D’Ippoliti, Peter Groenewegen, Cosimo Perrotta, Alfonso Sánchez and Gianni Vaggi all provide essays reflecting the great legacy of classical economists and the interpretation of their work, a permanent source of inspiration for Roncaglia. Jan Kregel, Michele Salvati and Mario Tonveronachi provide an integration of the work of the classics with the more modern contributions to this tradition in the work of John Maynard Keynes, Hyman Minsky and Josef Steindl, economists who also provided inspiration for Roncaglia’s work on economic policy. Other contributions deal with topics of great relevance for Roncaglia (e.g., the oil market) while the macroeconomic picture of the impact of austerity measures given by Davide Antonioli and Paolo Pini is much in line with Roncaglia’s view of economists not “as servants or as princes” but as citizens, socially and politically engaged, as any citizen should be (Roncaglia, 2017 ).
It is our hope that these essays will incite an interest in Alessandro Roncaglia’s life work and a revival of interest in classical political economy.
Marcella Corsi, Jan Kregel and Carlo D’Ippoliti
References
Roncaglia, A. 2017. “The Economist as an Expert: A Prince, a Servant or a Citizen?” In Experts on Trial: