ABSTRACT
In The Accumulation of Capital Joan Robinson (1956) developed a description of technology in terms of ‘productivity curves’. After the publication of Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities by Piero Sraffa (1960), Joan Robinson seemed to abandon that description of technology. However she still maintained its use in 1967-in a paper written with Naqvi where some productivity curves were drawn side-byside with other diagrams, but not really used (see the epigraph to this chapter, above)—and continued to use, for a number of years, a relationship between output per man and capital per man1 that she called the ‘pseudo-production function’. This relationship, in fact, can be obtained both from Sraffa’s construction and from the Robinsonian productivity curves (see below). Finally, ‘in 1974’ Joan Robinson ‘took the pseudo production function in pieces again’ (Robinson 1980b:138; see also 1980c:133).2
