ABSTRACT
Sraffa (1960) revived the ‘old classical idea’ of treating old machines left at the end of each period as economically different goods from the machines that entered the production at the beginning of the period. After him Schefold (1971, 1976, 1978, 1980, 1989: Chs 12–18), Roncaglia(1971), Baldone(1974), Varri (1974), Salvadori (1988), Kurz and Salvadori (1994, 1995: Chs 7 and 9), and Bidard (1996) built up models in which fixed capital was explicitly distinguished from other kinds of joint products. However, all these authors have always assumed that old machines are non-transferable. That is, they have assumed that an old machine produced jointly with a finished good cannot be used in the production of another finished good. For instance, an oven formerly used to bake bread cannot be used to bake biscuits. This is a very strong assumption. Almost all these authors have argued that the transferability of machines implies all the complications of joint production, and some of them have produced examples to illustrate this (see, for instance, the examples provided by Schefold 1971; see also Schefold 1989:151–2).
