Towards a New Understanding of Sraffa ― Insights from Archival Research

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The study is backed by previously unpublished, original, archival material.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 of the path leading the 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 the macro-social and monetary theory of exploitation, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, 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.

Riccardo Bellofiore is Professor of Political Economy at the University of Bergamo, Italy. He teaches Monetary Economics, Advanced Macroeconomics, International Monetary Economics and History of Economic Thought.

Scott Carter is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Tulsa in Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA. He teaches the Political Economy of Marx, Sraffa, & the Classicals, Comparative Heterodox Approaches to Value, Distribution & Price, Comparative Theories of Growth & Distribution, and History of Economic Thought.