The Founders of Post-Keynesianism and the Concept of Reswitching

The thesis deals with the evolution of thoughts of Joan Robinson's, Nicholas Kaldor's, Piero Sraffa's and Luigi Pasinetti's with regards to the issue of reswitching. Discussing Robinson, Kaldor, and Sraffa, it addresses the importance of the discussion on imperfect competition and Keynes's theory for developing their opinions within the capital theory. This issue was challenged in the 50s by Robinson who asked how capital can be measured. She discovered an option of reswitching to a more capital-using technique during a wage increase, but she did not focus on it very much. The thesis also seeks the importance of Sraffa's solution to the invariant standard of value for developing the debate on reswitching the technologies in the 60s, which was joined by both Pasinetti and Robinson. However, Robinson refused again in the 70s to deem the reswitching important within the critique of the neoclassical theory, and thus joined Kaldor who had voiced similar thoughts. At the end of the thesis, the question of Robinson underestimating the importance of reswitching, as pronounced by Pasinetti, is answered - she underestimated it in the 50s, whereas it is impossible to give a clear answer when it comes to the 70s, despite the differences found among Post-Keynesians and Neo-Ricardians.