I want to consider contributions to economics after 1870 that reconsidered classical or Marxist economics, used input-output models and linear algebra, or bear a family resemblance to at least some points in Sraffa's 1960 book.
- Vladimir K. Dmitriev. Used input-output analysis in an interpretation of Ricardo's theory of value.
- Ladislaus Bortkiewicz. Had a simple three-good model, with one basic good, input-output model of prices of production. Sraffa and others argued against aspects of his interpretation of Marx's theory of value.
- Georg von Charasoff. Apparently, around 1909 and 1910, he came up with the concept of "original capital". In a infinite series, much like Sraffa's reduction to dated labor, the capital goods needed more and more indirectly in producing some given net output converge to Sraffa's standard commodity.
- Father Maurice Potron. A fairly conservative Jesuit priest and mathematician, writing in French. I know of him from this collection.
- Wassily Leontief. His empirical work extends from the 1920s. I do not know that those building on his work often cite Sraffa.
- Walter Isard. Applied Leontief input-output analysis to regional or spatial economics in 1951.
- John von Neumann. I am thinking of the 1945-1946 translation of his A Model of General Economic Equilibrium. Kurz and Salvadori read this as a response to Robert Remak.
- Jacob T. Schwartz. A mathematician whose 1961 Lectures on the Mathematical Method in Analytical Economics criticizes neoclassical and Austrian economics. Personally, I found his work not as rigorous as Sraffa's.
I do not know much about many of these authors, but other economists in the post Sraffian tradition have written about them.
Lenin reconsidered marxist economics. In the former Leninist states in Eastern Europe the marxist economists appreciated the book of Sraffa, because it undermines the neoclassical theory. The neoclassical theory was rejected, because it assumes subjective preferences. But the work of Sraffa was still seen as bourgeois theory. For, neoricardian theory is not marxism. She ignores among others the historical materialism, capitalist alienation, class conscious and class struggle. These are the essential themes for marxists. I even doubt, whether they accepted stable product prices.
ReplyDeleteNot only in Eastern Europe. Franklin Delano Roosevelt III and Bob Rowthorn are two examples of westerners that argued Sraffa's economics was bourgeois.
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