Background
Garegnani, Pierangelo was born on August 8, 1930 in Milan. Son of Remo and Piera (Genovese) Garegnani.
Garegnani, Pierangelo was born on August 8, 1930 in Milan. Son of Remo and Piera (Genovese) Garegnani.
Bachelor of Arts (Political Science) University Paris, 1953. Doctor of Philosophy at University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, 1959.
Assistant professor at Rome University, 1961-1964. Rockefeller fellow of Economics Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, 1961-1962. Full professor at Sassari (Italy) University Law Faculty, 1964-1966, Pavia University, 1966-1971, University Florence, Italy, 1971-1974.
Visiting professor, fellow of Trinity College Cambridge University, 1973-1974. Full professor of Rome University, 1974-1992, Third University, Rome, since 1992.
In the light of Sraffa’s ‘Introduction’ to Ricardo’s Principles, my early work was based on the distinction between the rediscovered ‘classical’ approach to distribution in Quesnay, Smith and Ricardo and later theory. This work was an attempt to trace in both approaches the same unsolved problem of ‘measuring’ capital independently of distribution. The problem emerged as solvable in the classical analysis, compatible with ‘measurement’ in terms of a set of magnitudes.
However, later theory, examined in Walras’s and Wicksell’s versions, was found to depend on an unavailable ‘measurement’ of capital as a single magnitude. From this basis, later work proceeded along three lines. The first pursued the criticism of the conception of capital in modern explanation of distribution by the demand and supply of the factors of production in terms of their reciprocal ‘substitutability’.
This work dealt with the implications of the ‘reswitching’ of techniques and ‘reverse capital deepening’. It then pointed to the attempts to avoid the difficulty by expressing capital endowment in terms of a set of magnitudes, with the abandonment of the notion of a long-period
general equilibrium characteristic of previous theory, and with a recognised loss of descriptive power of the theory. The second line consisted of a clarification of the alternative classical analysis.
This brought into focus its characteristic separation between the determination of distribution and that of outputs. This separation contrasts sharply with modern simultaneous determination. The third line used results from the previous two in order to set Keynes’s propositions on the determination of aggregate output on a more solid basis, thus allowing for their application to long-term policy.
My interest has focussed of late on the way in which aggregate demand affects the evolution of output as productive capacity changes.
Member European Academy, Lincei Academy (correspondent).