New Book: "Towards a New Understanding of Sraffa" Edited by Bellofiore & Carter

Towards a New Understanding of Sraffa examines the legacy of Piero Sraffa by approaching his ideas in a new light, thanks to the insights gained from the opening of the archive collection of his papers at the Wren Library (Trinity College, Cambridge, UK). It provides a refreshing perspective into Sraffa's approach to money, the role of equilibrium and of the surplus in economic theory.  The study is backed by previously unpublished, original, archival material. It provides an appraisal of the discontinuities in the path leading to the publication in 1960 of Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities since its conception in the late 1920s. It unlocks significant new perspectives about the connection of Sraffa to Marx regarding Standard commodity, the macro-social and monetary theory of exploitation, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, and the transformation of values into prices of production. It also offers insights on how Sraffa dealt with money in the various phases of his thinking, and explores his ideas about the role of equilibrium and of the surplus in economic theory. It concludes with an account of some recent Sraffa scholarship and points towards future research avenues. 

See rest here.

PS: (Matías here) There was a special issue of the Cambridge Journal of Economics on the topic here, with a response by Heinz Kurz here (subscriptions required). (David here) And here is an earlier piece by Kurz on Sraffa's unpublished manuscripts, in relation to the history of economic thought.

Riccardo Bellofiore on why Italy’s stagnation could be future for Euro Zone

From The Guardian

This summer Italy fell into a triple-dip recession. After the 2008/09 collapse, the economy stagnated, heading back into recession during 2011 and never really recovering. The philosophy of Giulio Tremonti, who was the economic minister at the time, was to wait and see, until speculation killed Berlusconi’s government. Prime ministers Mario Monti and Enrico Letta followed Brussels’ self-defeating diktat for fiscal rigour, but even with moderate deficits the public debt/GDP ratio soared. The situation remained under control only thanks to the zero rate of interest and rhetoric by the European central bank president, Mario Draghi. Then came along Matteo Renzi, and Italian economic policy was all talk, talk, talk. While turning the screw of authoritarian parliamentary and electoral reforms, future lower taxes and liberalisations are promised to compensate for public cuts and to attract foreign investments. The €80 monthly tax break to lower-paid workers did not raise household consumption, and was instead spent on tariffs and local taxes. Yet in the past few weeks the outlook has changed, with 2014 second-quarter data showing France flat and Germany experiencing negative growth. Greece, Spain and Portugal registered rosier figures only because they were recovering from severe austerity. The eurozone cannot but be driven by the three biggest economies alone. This is a continental crisis within an anaemic global economy. However, an old Gramscian truth about Italy must be remembered: the “backwardness” of its capitalism is paradigmatic. Europe’s exit from the crisis needs the same policies that Italy needs, and without them Italy’s stagnation is the future for the entire continent.

Read rest here.

Augusto Graziani's contributions to economics

(1933-2014)

Augusto Graziani one of the leaders of the Italian Circuitist School has passed away. Below the abstract of the recent paper on Graziani's contributions to economics by Riccardo Bellofiore published in the Review of Keynesian Economics (ROKE).

"The article gives an appraisal of Augusto Graziani's thought as a heterodox structural Keynesian. Graziani has always challenged the basic assumptions of orthodox theory by rejecting the initial definition of the economic and social world as being populated by identical individuals, where consumers are sovereign, technology is exogenous and money is neutral. Since the 1970s, Graziani's efforts have aimed at rebuilding on solid foundations the line of inquiry that sees capitalism as a ‘monetary economy of production’. Authors such as Schumpeter and Keynes, and before them Wicksell and Marx, were all key influences on Graziani's work. This theoretical attitude shaped Graziani's studies on the Italian economy within the European and the global landscapes. We are confronted here with an idea of state intervention where demand policies are not separated from supply-side policies, and are indeed embodied in a structural design to redefine the composition of production with great attention to the quality of labour. He reminds us that economic theory has to put at the heart of its discourse not the ‘imperfections’ of the market, but rather the ‘normality’ of power and conflict, not only between labour and capital, but also between fractions of capital, and between capitalisms."

Full paper is available here.