Robert Vienneau: Thoughts Economics

1.0 Introduction Over a half-century ago, economists reached a consensus. The model in which employment and real wages are explained by the intersection of a downwards-sloping labor demand function and a supply function is incoherent, not even wrong. This incoherence was demonstrated under the assumptions of perfect competition and of firms that have adjusted their plant and other capital inputs. I do not know what Greg Mankiw and Jonathan Gruber are doing, but it certainly is not...

A Bad Reproduction Of An Engraving Of Quesnay In Kuczynski And MeekIntroduction This folder consists of: A 20 Sep. 1965 letter from Marguerite Kuczynski to Piero Sraffa. Sraffa’s handwritten annotation suggests his response is not in the archives. Handwritten notes made by Sraffa. An 18 Oct. 1965 letter from Marguerite Kuczynski to Piero Sraffa. A 25 Nov. 1965 handwritten draft letter from Piero Sraffa to Marguerite Kuczynski. An 18 Dec. 1965 letter from Marguerite Kuczynski to...

INET has a collection of links in memory of Lance Taylor. Alex Thomas has a focused review of A Reflection on Sraffa’s Revolution in Economic Theory, which was edited by Ajit Sinha. John E. King has an overview in Jacobin, of Paul Sweezy's work. Ian Birchall, also in Jacobin, tells us about Daniel Guérin. I have read his Anarchism, but I am currently reading Iain McKay's Proudhon collection. Monthly Review reposts Ksenia Arapko's review of Michael Heinrich's How to Read Marx's...

This is about Shove's review of The Socialist Tradition. Apparently Gray does not take those important in the development of economic thought seriously. Since Piero Sraffa is neither the recipient nor the sender, and the topic is not his work, maybe the editors of his collected works should not include this. 8, Abbotsford Park, Edinburgh. 10. 3rd November, 1946 Dear Shove, (If the fact that we occupied adjacent seats on the occasion of one of my rare visits to the Annual Meeting of...

[embedded content]First Lecture For MIT Microeconomics I associate Jonathan Gruber with Obamacare. I think the Affordable Care Act is totally insufficient and a great advance. If politicians hire you to model the effects of some policy change, might you want to use, more or less, the most widely accepted techniques? I am also appreciative that I can watch this. When you are teaching, should you present claims in the most romantic way possible? "That is why I can teach you the entire...

This is C/294 in the Sraffa archives. Rudiger Soltwedel had his own letterhead. D 66 Saarbrucken 3, 28. Febr. 1968 Waldhausweg 7 Evangelisches Studentenheim Professor Piero Sraffa Trinity College Cambridge Dear Sir, I am student of economics at the University of Saarbrucken and I just began my finals work for my diploma. The topic of this study that Prof. E. Schmen formulated is your essay and its title is exactly that of your book: ‘Sraffa’s production of commodities by means...

This letter is an item removed from printed books in Sraffa's library. It is labeled Sraffa I/38 in the archives where I stumbled into it. 15th Oct, 75 Centre for Economic Studies, Nehru University, New Delhi 57 Dear Piero Sraffa, How are you? A lot of things have happened since my return in July to Delhi. Personally, my health was not too good for some time but has now stabilised somewhat. I had considerable teaching load this term and have had to devote a lot of time to...

Figure 1: Wage Curves and Rent for an Example of Intensive Rent The analysis of the choice of technique has above always been based on the construction of a wage-rate of profits frontier. Given a technology in which requirements for use can be satisfied, prices of production for an eligible technique are uniquely determined by the given rate of profits. If the rate of profits is in a range where such prices are non-negative for at least one technique, one of the techniques is uniquely...

Figure 1: Wage Curves and Rent for an Example of Extensive Rent The analysis of the choice of technique in models of extensive rent can be based on the construction of wage curves, even though the outer envelope does not represent the cost-minimizing technique. The orders of fertility and rentability are emphasized here. The order of fertility is the order in which different qualities of land are introduced into production as requirements for use expand. The order of rentability specifies...

Figure 1: A Wage Frontier With A Fluke Switch Point A fluke example with fixed capital illustrates the emergence of the reswitching of techniques. Table 1 presents coefficients of production in a perturbation of an example from Schefold (1980). With the first process, workers, under the direction of mangers of firms, manufacture new machines. The remaining two processes are used to produce corn. The last process requires an input of an old machine, which is jointly produced with corn by the...