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He was born in Turin, Italy, the son of Angelo Sraffa, a Professor in commercial law, and Irma. He studied in his town and graduated at the local university with a work on inflation in Italy during and after WWI. Notably, his tutor was Luigi Einaudi, one of the most important Italian economists and later a president of the Italian Republic.
From 1921 to 1922 he studied in London at the London School of Economics. In 1922 he was appointed as Director of the provincial labour department in Milan, then a Professor in Political economyPolitical economy was the original term for the study of relations of production, especially between the three main classes of capitalist (or bourgeois) society: capitalists, workers and landowners. In contradistinction to the theory of the physiocrats, i first in PerugiaPerugia (population 150,000) is a city in the region of Umbria in central Italy, near the Tiber river, and the capital of the province of Perugia. Perugia gave its nickname to the famous painter Perugino (Pietro Vannucci), who lived and worked there., and later in CagliariCagliari is the capital of the island of Sardinia, an autonomous region of Italy. Cagliari is called Casteddu (literally, the castle in the Sardinian language. It has about 165,000 inhabitants, or about 300,000 including the suburbs (metropolitan area) (E, SardiniaSardinia Sardigna Sardinna or Sardinnia in the Sardinian language, Sardegna in Italian, Sardenya in Catalan), is the second largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, between Italy, France and Tunisia, south of Corsica. Sardinia has an area of 24,090 km2 an, where he met Antonio GramsciAntonio Gramsci ( January 22, 1891 April 27, 1937) was an Italian writer (ethnic Albanian by his father) and a politician, a leader and theorist of Socialism, Communism and anti- Fascism. Gramsci was born in Ales, Italy, on the island of Sardinia, a relat (the most important leader of Italian Communist PartyThe Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI) or Italian Communist Party emerged as Partito Comunista d'Italia or Communist Party of Italy from a secession by the Leninist comunisti puri tendency from the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) during that body's congress o). They became close friends, partly due their shared ideological views - Sraffa was at this time a radical marxistMarxism is the political practice and social theory based on the works of Karl Marx, a 19th century philosopher, economist, journalist, and revolutionary, along with Friedrich Engels. Marx drew on Hegel's philosophy, the political economy of Adam Smith, R (see [1]). He also was already in contact with Filippo Turati , perhaps the most important leader of Italian Socialist Party , whom he allegedly met and frequently visited in Rapallo , where his family had a holiday villa.
In 1925Centuries: 19th century 20th century 21st century Decades: 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s Years: 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 See also 1925 in aviation 1925 in film 1925 in literature 1925 in mu he wrote about returns to scale and perfect competition, underlining some doubtful points of Alfred Marshall's theory of the firm. This work was completed in an article he published the following year.
In 1927, his as yet undiscussed theory of value, but also his risky political ideas, his compromising friendship with Gramsci (that had already been imprisonned by Fascism - notably, Sraffa had brought him the materials, literally pens and paper, with which Gramsci would have written his "Quaderni dal Carcere"), brought John Maynard Keynes to prudentially invite him at the University of Cambridge, where he was initially assigned a lectureship. After a few years, Keynes created ex novo for him the charge of Marshall Librarian. Sraffa joined the so-called "cafeteria group", together with Frank Ramsey and Ludwig Wittgenstein, a sort of informal club that discussed of Keynes' theory of probability and Friedrich Hayek's theory on business cycles, while beginning his researches into the life and work of David Ricardo, a project also due to Keynes influence, and which he undertook with an extraordinary degree of conscientiousness: George Stigler was to write later "Ricardo was a fortunate man... And now, 130 years after his death, he is as fortunate as ever : he has been befriended by Sraffa."
His "The Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities" was an attempt to perfect the classical theory of value (economics), as originally developed by David Ricardo and others. In this sense he aimed to demonstrate flaws in the mainstream neoclassical theory of value and develop and alternative analysis. In particular, Sraffa's technique of aggregating capital as dated inputs of labour led to the Cambridge capital controversy.
There was and remains controversy about whether Sraffa's work truly constituted a refutation of neoclassical economics. Many post-Keynesian economists use Sraffa's critique as justification for abandoning neoclassical analysis and exploring other models of economic behavior. Others see his work as compatible with neoclassical economics, as developed in modern general equilibrium models. Nonetheless, Sraffa's work, particularly his interpretation of Ricardo and his "The Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities", is seen as the starting point of the Neo-Ricardian school in the 1960s.
Finally, Sraffa was associated with Ludwig Wittgenstein, who credited him with making important insights into his philosophical works Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and the Philosophical Investigations.
Sraffa was described as a very intelligent man, with a proverbial shyness and a real devotion for study and books. His famous library contained more than 8,000 volumes, now partly in the Trinity College Library.
In 1972 he was attributed a honorary doctorate by Paris' university ( Sorbonne), and in 1976 he received another one from Madrid's university.
He became rich after a long-term investment on Japanese government bonds that he had made the day after the nuclear bombing on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; a popular story tells he had received a huge amount of money that for more than a decade he refused to invest, until he could find a "safe" opportunity. He correctly reasoned that Japan wouldn't remain a poor country too long.
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