This paper compares the models of Arrow and Debreu [1954] and Sraffa [1960], and concludes that (1) the models are informationally distinct conceptions of a capitalist economy, (2) they support radically distinct - though complete and entirely correct - theories of value, (3) the prices in the...

Agency-based explanations of the great deprivation, contrasted with structure-based explanations, suffer not merely from the criticism of relying on irrational and irresponsible behavior of millions, including that of the most astute financial experts, but are also at a loss to explain why such...

In his Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations Adam Smith (1776) considered the phenomenon of division of labor so enormously significant for the creation of a nation’s wealth that he devoted the first three chapters of his book to an investigation of this process. This is...

This paper examines some of the consequences for economic theory of the replacement of binary personal preferences by non-binary personal preferences in an Arrow-Debreu society as in Debreu (1959), and reaches the conclusion that there is both much damage to existing theory and greater...

We prove the existence of a Pareto optimal state of a society with non-binary personal preferences. To our knowledge, this is the weakest set of conditions under which the existence of a Pareto optimal state has been proven. In our theory everybody in society engages in maximization as a...

Adam Smith (1776) devoted the first three chapters to the division of labor in his Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. This process, carried far enough, eventually results in a divergence between the distributions of supplies and demands of such...

A country’s production possibility frontier or PPF is defined as the boundary of its economy’s production set in the net output space for a given technology and fixed quantities of primary factors of production. In general equilibrium theory, exogenous changes in technology or primary-factor...

This paper compares the theory of value and distribution of Arrow and Debreu [1954] with that of Sraffa [1960]. I consider such versions of the two models that capture their salient features, without aiming at the greatest possible generality, so as to isolate the precise nature of the...