Empirical Evidence Exists On Sraffa Effects

As I have pointed out in the past, economists have discovered that, given standard neoclassical assumptions, competitive firms are sometimes willing to adopt a more labor-intensive technique at a higher wage. For some reason, you will have difficulty finding this possibility described in any textbook written by an author who is not self-consciously heterodox. Sometimes economists respond to this circumstance by asserting that no empirical evidence exists that technology can have the consequences highlighted by the sort of example I presented. This response has always seemed to me to be a non sequitur, as well as just mistaken.

I haven't read all the references I am about to mention. Not only do I not see how empirical evidence is relevant to a logical contradiction, I don't have the needed language skills:

"I have gathered that the most active discussion, both theoretical and empirical, on the how probable the occurence of reswitching is, has recently been taking place in the Italian language journals - one estimate puts the number of such papers in recent years to around seventy! I did not have access to any of them." -- Ahmad, Syed (1991). Capital in Economic Theory: Neoclassical, Cambridge, and Chaos, Aldershot: Edward Elgar: 250.

Empirical results that economists have explicitly connected to my favorite controversy in economics can be thought of as falling into three categories:

• Case studies of particular industries
• Albin, Peter (1975). "Reswitching: An Empirical Observation, A Theoretical Note, and an Environmental Conjecture", Kyklos, V. 28: 149-153.
• Asheim, Geir B. (1980). "The Occurrence of Paradoxical Behavior in a Model where Economic Activity has Environmental Effects", Norweigan School of Economics and Business Administration Discussion Papers.
• Barnes, Trevor and Eric Sheppard (1984). "Technical Choice and Reswitching in Space Economies", Regional Science and Urban Economics, V. 14: 345-352.
• Hartwick, John (1976). "Intermediate Goods and the Spatial Integration of Land Use", Regional Science and Urban Economics, V. 6: 127-145.
• Ozanne, Adam (1996). "Do Supply Curves Slope Up? The Empirical Relevance of The Sraffian Critique of Neoclassical Production Economies", Cambridge Journal of Economics, V. 20: 749-762.
• Prince, Raymond and J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. (1984). "Environmental Costs and Reswitching Between Food and Energy Production in the Western United States", James Madison University mimeo
• Prince, Raymond and J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. (1985). "Some Implications of Delayed Environmental Costs for Benefit Cost Analysis: A Study of Reswitching in the Western Coal Lands", Growth and Change, V. 16: 18-25.
• Schweizer, U. and P. Varaiya (1977). "The Spatial Structure of Production with a Leontief Technology-II: Substitute Techniques", Regional Science and Urban Economics, V. 7: 293-320.
• Scott, A. J. (1979). "Commodity Production and the Dynamics of Land-Use Differentiation", Urban Studies, V. 16: 95-104.
• Analysis of input-output data from national income accounts
• Han, Zonghie and Bertram Schefold (2003). "An Empirical Investigation of Paradoxes (Reswitching and Reverse Capital Deepening) in Capital Theory" (draft) (Sep).
• Simulation and analytical results on the likelihood of reswitching and capital reversing.
• Bidard, Christian and Lucette Carter (2000). "Comment", in Critical Essays on Piero Sraffa's Legacy in Economics (ed. by Heinz D. Kurz), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Mainwaring, Lynn and Ian Steedman (2000). "On the Probability of Re-switching and Capital Reversing in a Two-Sector Sraffian Model", in Critical Essays on Piero Sraffa's Legacy in Economics (ed. by Heinz D. Kurz), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Petri, Fabio (2000). "On the Likelihood and Relevance of Reverse Capital Deepening", University of Sienna working paper N. 279 (Feb).
• Salvadori, Neri (2000). "Comment", in Critical Essays on Piero Sraffa's Legacy in Economics (ed. by Heinz D. Kurz), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Zambelli, Stefano (2004). "The 40% Neoclassical Aggregate Theory of Production", Cambridge Journal of Economics, V. 28, N. 1: 99-120.