Whatever Happened to the Cambridge Capital Theory Controversies? (2003)

Her article precipitated into the public domain the Cambridge controversies in capital theory, so-called by Harcourt (1969) because the protagonists were principally associated directly or indirectly with Cambridge, England, or Cambridge, Massachusetts. The controversies raged from the mid-1950s through the mid-1970s, with highly prominent protagonists – Piero Sraffa, Joan Robinson, Luigi Pasinetti and Pierangelo Garegnani in the ‘English’ corner, versus Paul Samuelson, Robert Solow, Frank Hahn and Christopher Bliss in the ‘American’ or neoclassical corner1 – slugging it out in first-rank journals such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Review of Economic Studies and the Economic Journal. Blaug (1975) and Harcourt (1972, 1976) cover both sides of the controversy.