The present paper discusses the role of the financial sector in a capitalist economy, arguing that the huge increase in its weight (economic and otherwise) in the last decades is not justified by the importance of its contribution to economic growth. The point is developed going back to the...

This paper discusses the existence of a corn-ratio theory of profits in Robert Torrens's works, the Ricardian origin of which is avowed by Torrens himself. This constitutes significant evidence in favor of Piero Sraffa's reading of Ricardo's early theory of profits. Samuel Hollander's (1995)...

This paper is about the presence in Torrens's works of the 1810s and 1820s of a theory of profits based on an assumption of physical homogeneity between capital and product--a theory that derived from the "corn ratio" theory of profits put forward by Ricardo in 1814-15. Some views about...