by Sraffian economics — an unhappy trade-off between rigour and relevance We have continually noted the tendency of Sraffians to subordinate the study of the substantive nature of economic phenomena to the requirements of logical rigor, and for Sraffians rigor equals GET (General Equilibrium Theory), the simultaneous determination of endogenous economic variables. The marriage of Sraffian economics and GET is not a promising avenue for studying past thinkers, such as classical economists, and yet it is one of the major claims of Sraffian economics that it alone throws light on past ideas. The fact that classical economics, whatever else it is, is the study of an economy in motion, indeed in motion in a state of disequilibrium only tending toward
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Sraffian economics — an unhappy trade-off between rigour and relevance
We have continually noted the tendency of Sraffians to subordinate the study of the substantive nature of economic phenomena to the requirements of logical rigor, and for Sraffians rigor equals GET (General Equilibrium Theory), the simultaneous determination of endogenous economic variables. The marriage of Sraffian economics and GET is not a promising avenue for studying past thinkers, such as classical economists, and yet it is one of the major claims of Sraffian economics that it alone throws light on past ideas. The fact that classical economics, whatever else it is, is the study of an economy in motion, indeed in motion in a state of disequilibrium only tending toward equilibrium, makes Sraffian economics particularly inappropriate for illuminating classical economics. And the shadow that it casts over classical economics is made even darker when it considers problems in modern economics …
Sraffians spend their time finding logical flaws in the models of their enemies rather than building platforms for illuminating the workings of an economy. They are formalists pure and simple, making a fetish of the form of theories at the neglect of strengthening their content. They simply cannot resist what Nancy Cartwright (1999) calls “the vanity of rigour in economics” …
I have frequently likened Sraffa to Debreu, but Debreu (1987, 3:402) was always insistent that GET as such proves nothing about the case for free markets versus state intervention, which would require a descriptive interpretation that goes beyond the domain of GET. But Sraffa implies that the role of demand in price determination is settled once and for all by his objectivist theory even before we have begun to interpret the model by adding to it empirical assumptions from the real world.
Just as post-war mainstream economics has been criticized for being founded on an axiomatic-deductive mathematical methodology, I think Blaug is fair in his criticism of Sraffa — the core of Sraffian economics is based on the same methodology.