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WICKSELL ON WALRAS’S EARLY TREATMENT OF CAPITAL AND INTEREST

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2018

Andrea Imperia ,
Vincenzo Maffeo  and
Fabio Ravagnani
Andrea Imperia
Affiliation:
Sapienza University of Rome, Italy;
Vincenzo Maffeo
Affiliation:
Sapienza University of Rome, Italy;
Fabio Ravagnani*
Affiliation:
Sapienza University of Rome, Italy;
*
†correspondence address: fabio.ravagnani@uniroma1.it.
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Abstract

In this paper we examine the criticism that Knut Wicksell advanced against Léon Walras’s treatment of capital and interest at the end of the nineteenth century, as well as the views of two distinguished followers of Walras concerning the points raised by the Swedish economist. As regards the first aspect, it should be noted that the criticism put forward by Wicksell at that time refers to the earlier editions of the Éléments, in which circulating capital is excluded from the analysis. We thus endeavor to clarify Wicksell’s remarks on the consequences of that exclusion for both the representation of the social production process and the determination of the interest rate. As to the second aspect, our discussion indicates that the appropriate way of treating the capitalistic element of production was an unsettled issue within the small circle of Walras’s followers at the end of the nineteenth century.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the History of Economic Thought , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , March 2018 , pp. 41 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © The History of Economics Society 2018 

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Footnotes

This is a revised and extended version of the paper presented at the 7th Conference of the International Walras Association held in Lyon in September 2010 and published in French in the conference proceedings; cf. Diemer and Potier (2013). We wish to thank R. Arena, A. Campus, A. Lazzarini, F. Petri, M. Pivetti, P. Trabucchi, and two anonymous referees for useful comments on earlier drafts. The usual disclaimer applies. We are particularly grateful to E. Nylander, Head of Cultural Heritage Collections, University of Lund, for the permission to reproduce Barone’s letter to Wicksell, dated November 23, 1895.

References

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