ABSTRACT
In 1962 Joan Robinson published an essay entitled `The Basic Theory of Normal Prices' (Robinson 1962a), which was reprinted in the same year Ðwith the title of Normal Prices (Robinson 1962b)Ðas the first of her Essays in the Theory of Economic Growth (Robinson 1962c). The prices referred to in the essay are those appearing in Piero Sraffa's (1960) price equations. Adding to these equations the idea that the rate of profits `is determined by the rate of accumulation of capital' (Robinson 1962b:12) is Joan Robinson's way of `closing the system' (ibid.: 11). `Postulating a real-wage rate governed by conventional standard of life' was Ricardo's and (less consistently) Marx's (ibid.). As to Sraffa, he allegedly `offers no observation on the subject' (ibid.). His view of the rate of profits as `susceptible of being determined from the outside of the system of production, in particular by the level of the money rates of interest' (Sraffa 1960:33) i s not mentioned.
