Journal of the History of Economic Thought

Table of Contents - March 2012 - Volume 34, Issue 01  

Research Articles

C.E. FERGUSON’S LOST REPLY TO JOAN ROBINSON ON THE THEORY OF CAPITAL

SCOTT CARTER

Abstract

In 1971, Joan Robinson entered into a debate with the American neoclassical economist C.E. Ferguson in the Canadian Journal of Economics over the efficacy of the neoclassical theory of capital in light of the Cambridge Controversies raging at the time. Recent archival evidence from the Martin Bronfenbrenner Papers at Duke Archive has uncovered a heretofore lost reply Ferguson wrote to Robinson on or around September 1971, three months before his death. That reply is published for the first time as an Appendix to this article. Uncovering this reply, as well as correspondence between Ferguson, Bronfenbrenner, and Solow, shines a light into the American neoclassical camp of the late 1960s and early 1970s as the early phase in the Cambridge Controversies was drawing to a close.

Footnotes

Scott Carter, Department of Economics, the University of Tulsa (scott-carter@utulsa.edu). The author would like to thank Geoff Harcourt for comments on earlier drafts. He would also like to thank Robert Solow for correspondence to the present author regarding Ferguson, as well as permission to consult his correspondence with Ferguson. All archival material from the Robert Solow Papers (RSP) and the Martin Bronfenbrenner Papers (MBP) are from the Economics Papers Project at the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina.