Pierangelo Garegnani, the Classical Surplus Approach and Demand-led Growth: Introduction to the Symposium

Abstract

Sraffian economics is well-suited to absorb and reinforce the more revolutionary insights of Keynes’s legacy. A research programme\ud in this direction was launched in the early 1960s by Pierangelo Garegnani (1962) in a report he wrote for the private research institute SVIMEZ. This symposium assesses the present situation as regards Garegnani’s seminal 1962 contribution. It therefore reflects some important disputes that have\ud engaged Sraffian and other non-mainstream economists on the issue of demandled growth over the past three decades

Growth, investment share and the stability of the Sraffian Supermultiplier model in the U.S. economy (1985–2017)

“…3 Serrano (1995) defines autonomous expenditures as 'all those expenditures (…) that are neither financed by the contractual (wage and salary) incomes generated by production decisions nor are capable of affecting the productive capacity of the capitalist sector of the economy' (p. 71). According 1 Great part of this discussion can be found in recent published symposia to discuss the role of autonomous demand in demand-led growth models (Cesaratto & Mongiovi, 2015;Kurz & Salvadori, 2019) and extensions of the Supermultiplier model (Summa & Freitas, 2020). For other extensions of the model to include monetary policy, see Aspromourgos (2007).…”

Initial and Final Finance in the Monetary Circuit and the Theory of Effective Demand

“…5 Some Sraffians prefer not to formalise the role of autonomous demand through the supermultiplier. On this matter, Garegnani (2015Garegnani ( [1962) is a common antecedent of all sorts of Sraffian views (see Cesaratto and Mongiovi, 2015). 6 As Moore (1988, p. 291) put it:…”

“…Section 2 sketches the Classical‐Keynesian approach to demand‐led determination of output level and growth and introduce questions on how to fit endogenous money creation into it. In this approach, the autonomous components of aggregate demand (AD)—which in the short period also include investment—are regarded as the ultimate driving force of output level and growth (Cesaratto and Mongiovi, ). Although seldom discussed openly, received wisdom has it that endogenous credit/money creation finances final payments related to these components; that is, monetary demand precedes production.…”

La financiación inicial y final en el circuito monetario y la teoría de la demanda efectiva

“…Los economistas tradicionales están dispuestos a admitir que el dinero endógeno es el que financia la inversión, la que a su vez genera ahorros. En su visión esto se puede hacer a una tasa de interés en la cual la inversión genera capacidad-ahorros de pleno empleo 15 . La sustancia no es entonces diferente del enfoque del dinero exógeno: se presta atención a la tasa de interés natural, la tasa a la cual las inversiones son iguales a la capacidad-ahorros de pleno empleo.…”

“…14 Por supuesto, los bc no conocen la tasa de interés natural. Se supone entonces que la aproximan cuando el desempleo está en su nivel "natural", es decir, de modo que mantenga a raya las demandas de mejoras salariales y, en consecuencia, la inflación cerca a cero o constante 15. Como dijo Graziani: "una economía monetaria, siempre que esté dotada de un sistema bancario capaz de operar correctamente, puede asegurar un equilibrio sustancialmente idéntico al de una economía de trueque [neoclásica] caracterizada por precios monetarios estables"(1994,45).…”