ABSTRACT
The transatlantic debates on capital theory produced a great sense of excitement in the economics profession in the 1960s and early 1970s. The controversies pitting Cambridge (England) against Cambridge (Massachusetts) were admirably expounded in a survey which Geoffrey Harcourt was commissioned to do for the Journal of Economic Literature (Harcourt 1969, subsequently expanded into Harcourt 1972). Graduate students at my own university, though far from Massachusetts, became intrigued with the notion that there was something to debate in economic theory after all, even regarding fundamental matters. On their own initiative they organized seminars to present and discuss chapters in Geoff s book. Of course I wanted then to meet the author himself, and a family visit to Australia gave me that opportunity, combining tourism in Adelaide with a memorable visit to the university. Further encounters with Geoff followed in Cambridge, England, where I spent parts of two leaves of absence. Professionally, the spotlight on the Cambridge controversies stimulated my interest in and self-study of the history of economic thought, of whose importance they had convinced me. Who first conceived of an aggregate production function depending on a variable representing an economy’s entire capital stock? How had this been justified? How Ricardian was Sraffa’s Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities? Geoff’s book introduced me to the weird and wonderful world of capital reversing, Wicksell effects (price and real), double-switching, surrogate production functions, jelly and fossilized capital, basic and nonbasic commodities. standard systems, the Kaldor and Pasinetti growth-anddistribution models.
