During the last fifteen years certain very fundamental aspects of economic theory have been very actively debated. The debate has often been called the Cambridge controversy, since the main parti­ cipants in the debate come from Cambridge, USA and Cambridge, Eng­ land. In this debate certain important foundations of economic theory have been criticized which are specifically important for understand­ ing price formation and income distribution. An important starting point has been Sraffa's extensions of Ricardo's theory and one has therefore sometimes called those neo-Ricardians, who have based themselves on Sraffa's work. We shall deal with some important issues that have been debated, and we shall try to describe a rather complete theoretical construction which will be an alternative to neo-classical theory. A special problem relates to the title of the book and classification of authocs to whom we refer. Perhaps post-Keynesian would sometimes be a better label than neo-Ricardian. We have used the latter name for the book due to its large emphasis on Sraffa's work. To understand the main parts of the book only basic algebra and calculus are necessary.

Inhalt

I Theory and Debate.- 1 What is Neo-Ricardian Theory?.- 2 History Emphasizing Ricardo.- 2.1 The time before Ricardo.- 2.2 Ricardo.- 2.3 The reaction against Ricardo.- 2.4 Marx' system.- 2.5 The neo-classical system.- 2.6 The Keynesian revolution.- 2.7 Conclusions.- 3 The Sraffa System.- 3.1 Introduction.- 3.2 Production without surplus.- 3.3 Production with a surplus which goes to the capitalists.- 3.4 Production with a surplus: the Sraffa system.- 3.5 The standard product.- 3.6 The Sraffa system: uniqueness.- 3.7 Transformation into labor terms.- 3.8 Conclusions.- 4 The Capital Controversy.- 4.1 Determination of the factor-price curve.- 4.2 The production function and income distribution.- 4.3 The surrogate production function.- 4.4 Critique of Samuelson's production function.- 4.5 The importance of the rate of interest.- 4.5.1 One commodity.- 4.5.2 Many commodities.- 4.6 Conclusions.- 5 Income Distribution and Growth.- 5.1 Conditions for long run growth.- 5.2 The neo-classical view.- 5.3 A combined view.- 5.4 Kaldor.- 5.5 Pasinetti.- 5.6 Samuelson and Modigliani.- 5.7 Kaldor again.- 5.8 Conclusions.- II Applications.- 6 Applications: An Introduction.- 7 Some Stability Problems: An Outline.- 7.1 Introduction.- 7.2 Effects of a wage increase.- 7.3 Effects of a productivity increase.- 7.4 Effects of changes in demand.- 7.5 Summary.- Appendix A.- Appendix B.- 8 Wage Earners' Funds.- 8.1 Some forms of vage earners' fund.- 8.2 Analysis.- 8.3 The valuation ratio.- 8.4 The share of capital owned by the fund.- 8.5 The capitalists' propensity to save.- 8.6 Wage earners' funds and the stockmarket.- 8.7 Conclusions.- 9 Technological Change.- 9.1 Introduction.- 9.2 Measurement of technological change: a critique.- 9.3 A growth model: Kaldor and Mirrlees.- 9. 4 Summary.- 10 The Efficiency of Different Economic Systems.- 10.1 "Double switching" and efficiency.- 10.2 Macroeconomic equilibrium.- 10.3 Convergence or not.- 10.4 Conclusions.- 11 Concluding Remarks.- References.