Profile Major Works Resources

Luigi L. Pasinetti, 1930-

Photo of L. Pasinetti

Leading member of the second generation of Cambridge Keynesians, Luigi Pasinetti also founded its Neo-Ricardian strain.

Originally from Zanica (near Bergamo, Italy), Luigi Lodovico Pasinetti studied at the Catholic University in Milan, receiving his first degree in 1954, and going on to study at abroad at various locations, including Cambridge University, where he came under the influence of Piero Sraffa  Richard Kahn, Joan Robinson and others of the Cambridge School.  In 1961, Pasinetti was elected fellow of King's College, Cambridge, where he would remain for many years (he received his doctorate eventually in 1962).

While still a research student, Luigi Pasinetti developed one of the first rigorous mathematical formulations of Ricardo's theory of value and distribution (1960). His insights led him later to develop one of the more general expositions of the reswitching problem in Neoclassical capital theory (1966) and thus made him a leader of the Cambridge (UK) side during the Cambridge Capital Controversy.

Pasinetti also lent his efforts tot he Kaldorian theory of growth and placed that model as a centerpiece of the new Cambridge approach (1962).   No stranger to controversies, Pasinetti engaged his intellectual Neoclassical opponents head-on - Samuelson, Solow, Meade, Modigliani . Thus, Pasinetti was responsible for several fundamental pillars of Cambridge school. His efforts to develop the Neo-Ricardian strain are well-documented in his stunningly clear Lectures (1977) and in his Essays (1974) and his even more remarkable 1981 treatise. 

Pasinetti left Cambridge in 1976, to become professor of economics at the Catholic University in Milan.  Pasinetti continued in pursuing the details and extending the applicability of the Neo- Ricardian system (e.g. 1980, 1988).  He has become particularly interested in structural change, i.e. the  responses of multi-sectoral models of the economy to technical changes.

 

  

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Major works of Luigi L. Pasinetti

  • "A Mathematical Formulation of the Ricardian System", 1960, RES.
  • "Cyclical Fluctations and Economic Growth", 1960, Oxford EP.
  • "Rate of Profit and Income Distribution in Relation to the Rate of Economic Growth", 1962, RES. [pdf]
  • "Professor Meade's Rate of Profit in a Growing Economy", 1964, EJ.
  • "A New Theoretial Approach to the Problems of Economic Growth", 1965, APSSV
  • "The Rate of Profit in a Growing Economy: A reply", 1966, EJ.
  • "New Results in an Old Framework: Comments on Samuelson and Modigliani", 1966, RES.
  • "Changes in the Rate of Profit and Switches of Techniques", 1966, QJE.
  • "Switches of Technique and the `Rate of Return' in Capital Theory", 1969, EJ.
  • "Again on Capital Theory and Solow's Rate of Return", 1970, EJ.
  • "The Notion of Vertical Integration in Economic Analysis", 1973, Metroeconomica.
  • Growth and Income Distribution: Essays in economic theory, 1974.
  • Lectures on the Theory of Production, 1977.
  • "Wicksell effects and re-switching of techniques in capital theory",1978, Scand JE
  • "The Rate of Interest and the Distribution of Income in a Pure Labor Economy", 1980, JPKE.
  • Editor, Essays on the Theory of Joint Production, 1980.
  • Structural Change and Economic Growth: A theoretical essay on the dynamics of the wealth of nations, 1981.
  • “The Accumulation of Capital”, 1983, Cambridge JE
  • "Conditions of Existence of a Two-Class Economy in the Kaldor and More General Models of Growth and Distribution", 1983, Kyklos.
  • "Sraffa's Circular Process and the Concept of Vertical Integration", Political Economy, 1986. [pdf]
  • "Theory of Value: A source of alternative paradigms in economic analysis", 1986, in Baranzini and Scazzieri, editors, Foundations of Economics.
  • "Growing Subsystems, Vertically Hyper-Integrated Sectors and the Labour Theory of Value", 1988, Cambridge JE.
  • "Sraffa on Income Distribution", 1988, Cambridge JE.
  • “Ricardian Debt/Taxation Equivalence in the Kaldor Theory of Profits and Income Distribution”, 1989, Cambridge JE
  • “Sraffa's Circular Process and the Concept of Vertical Integration”, 1990, in Bharadwaj and Schefold, eds., Essays on Piero Sraffa
  • Structural Economic Dynamics: A Theory of the Economic Consequences of Human Learning. 1993 [pdf]
  • “Economic Theory and Institutions”,1996, in Delorme and Dopfer, eds., The Political Economy of Diversity
  • “Joan Robinson and ‘Reswitching’”, 1996, in  Marcuzzo et al., editors, The Economics of Joan Robinson
    London: Routledge, 1996, pp. 209-217;
  • “The Principle of Effective Demand” and "The Marginal Efficiency of Investment”, 1997, in  Harcourt and Riach, eds., A “Second Edition” of the General Theory
  • “J.M.Keynes's ‘Revolution’ – the major event of twentieth-century economics?”, 1998,  in Pasinetti and Schefold, editors, The Impact of Keynes on Economics in the 20th Century.
  • "La critica della teoria neoclassica della crescita e della distribuzione", 2000/1, Moneta e Credito [critique of Solow, onl][English trans. "Critique of the neoclassical theory of growth and distribution", 2000, PSLQR]
  • "Continuity and Change in Piero Sraffa's Thought - An Archival Excursus" [pdf]
  • "Economic Theory and Technical Progress", 2000/1, JEI, [pdf]
  • "Public Debt in the European Union Countries: Two ways of facing the problem" (catt)
  • "The Principle of Effective Demand and its relevance in the long run", 2001, JPKE
  • Keynes and the Cambridge Keynesians: A ‘Revolution in Economics’ to be Accomplished, 2007

 
HET

 
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Resources on Pasinetti

  • Luigi Pasinetti's Homepage
  • Luigi Pasinetti's page at Universita Cattolica, including publications list
  • "Between Keynes and Sraffa: Pasinetti on the Cambridge School" by Axel Leijonhufvud [pdf]
  • "Luigi Pasinetti and the Cambridge economists" by Mariana C. Marcuzzo, 2014, HER
  • "Structural Analysis in Retrospect. A Note On Luigi Pasinetti’s Structural Economic Dynamics" by Pier Luigi Porta, 1998 SdPE
  • Wikipedia

 

 
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