Professor Pasinetti has extended Sraffa’s theoretical vision to the analysis of economic development. So far, to my knowledge, this has had limited application to current economic events. I should like, instead, to put forward the hypothesis that it can be of considerable help in understanding several important phenomena of our age.
Sraffa’s model is an analytical interpretation of subsistence, of the conditions for the existence and survival of an economic system. The relationships between the quantities of commodities produced and used for production and prices must correspond to certain conditions connected with technical relationships.