ABSTRACT
According to Carlo Zappia, Sraffa’s criticism had a crucial impact on the development of Hayek’s thinking. Zappia contends that it contributed in a profound way to the critical review of the equilibrium theory which Hayek undertook in the 1930s. This apparently was because not only had Hayek to restate his definition of intertemporal equilibrium in the light of the Sraffian notion of ‘own rates of interest’, but he had to effectively revise his opinion about ‘the ability of real economic systems to automatically adjust to exogenous real shocks’. In particular, according to Zappia, it was only on account of Sraffa’s criticism that Hayek realised that the lack of coordination of intertemporal plans of action can also occur in real economic systems.
