Piero Sraffa - Major Works

Major Works

In 1927, Sraffa's yet undiscussed theory of value, but also his friendship with Antonio Gramsci, a risky and compromising endeavor in the context of the Italian fascist regime, considering Gramsci had previously been imprisoned, (Sraffa had brought him the material, literally pens and paper, with which Gramsci would write his Prison Notebooks), brought John Maynard Keynes to prudently invite Sraffa to the University of Cambridge, where the Italian economist was initially assigned a lectureship.

That Sraffa hated lecturing is normally explained by his shyness. But perhaps he declined teaching an economic theory he found wanting. So, he stopped collaborating in the making of Keynes' General Theory as Keynes used a subjective propensity to consume. After a few years, Keynes created ex novo for Sraffa the charge of Marshall Librarian.

Sraffa joined the so-called "cafeteria group", together with Frank P. Ramsey and Ludwig Wittgenstein, a sort of informal club that discussed Keynes's theory of probability and Friedrich Hayek's theory on business cycles. In 1939, Sraffa was elected to a Fellowship at Trinity College.