Sraffa, Piero (1898-1983)

Italian-born economist, in the UK from 1927, a critic of neoclassical economics. In 1926 he suggested that, contrary to orthodox theory, firms could influence the price of a product even if there were a large number of firms competing against each other. He also pointed out the difficulties of applying supply-and-demand analysis to capital in his book Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities (1960). He suggested that these difficulties, related to the problem of defining capital precisely, meant that the idea that prices are wholly determined by the interaction of supply and demand was flawed.