Piero Sraffa

Independent activity 1898.8.5.–1983.9.3. ○ Natural causes

Italian economist at Cambridge whose Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities founded the neo-Ricardian school

Born in Turin to a wealthy Italian Jewish family, Sraffa became a close friend of Antonio Gramsci in his student years. His 1926 article "The Laws of Returns under Competitive Conditions" exposed the inconsistency of Marshall's partial-equilibrium theory, and in 1927, under pressure from the Fascist regime, he accepted Keynes's invitation to Cambridge, where he stayed for the rest of his life. When Gramsci was imprisoned he supplied the books, pens and paper with which Gramsci wrote the Prison Notebooks. He edited the works of David Ricardo, and in Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities (1960) he determined relative prices and the rate of profit from physical inputs and the wage alone. The book founded the neo-Ricardian school, armed the Cambridge side in the capital controversy and reshaped the debate on Marx's transformation problem.