ABSTRACT
Either reswitching or capital reversing, or both, had been noticed earlier,1 without, however, becoming the subject of a debate. It was not until the 1950s2 that these phenomena began to be promoted to the prominent position they occupied in the discussions in capital theory in the 1960s and part of the 1970s. This was due to a change in the theoretical background in economics. This change in context was the renewed interest in economic growth. Keynes’ General Theory had virtually dominated the stage ever since it was published in 1936. But Keynes’ theory is a theory of the short period, i.e. it does not deal with the causes and consequences of changes in the capital stock. The neglect of the long run had been the focus of the criticism byKeynes’ main opponent during the 1930s, F. A. Hayek. But the sweeping success of the General Theory pushed this criticism into the background.3 Nevertheless, JoanRobinson, whowas very close toKeynes, made it her explicit
goal to develop a theory of the long run which was to embed or encompass the short-runGeneral Theory of Keynes.4 What she envisaged was a theory of growth, though in a comparative static framework, with features that she derived from the work of Harrod. In view of her expressed intention to develop such a theory and the sequence of publications actually developing it, we may speak of a research programme.
