ABSTRACT
I suppose that to most people economists are very dull dogs and the thought of them being cross within or without the confines of their discipline is a surprising one. Yet there are several areas of economic theory in which controversy has been rampant and no more so than in the realm of the theory of capital. Indeed, a feature of the trade has been virulent outbreaks from time to time of really vitriolic exchanges between opposing schools of capital theorists, the latest of which has been happening over the last twenty years or so. It is associated especially with the brawls between the two Cambridges – Cambridge, England, and Cambridge, Mass. Several of the world’s leading economists are involved – Joan Robinson (it was her celebrated paper, ‘The Production Function and the Theory of Capital’ (1953–4), which started it all off), Nicholas Kaldor, Maurice Dobb, Piero Sraffa, Luigi Pasinetti, Frank Hahn and James Meade, of Cambridge, England; the indissoluble duo, Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow, and also Franco Modigliani, all of M.I.T., Cambridge, Mass. (Geography is not a good classifier of rival groups, however, because some of the Cambridge, England, group have their spiritual home in Cambridge, Mass.)
