Luigi L. Pasinetti (1930–)

Abstract

Luigi Pasinetti is the senior living heir of the Cambridge Post-Keynesian School of Economics and critic of traditional marginal economics. He stirred two major debates of the 1960s and 1970s. One concerns the macro distribution of income and the determination of the rate of profits of a growing system. This led to the formulation of the famous ‘Pasinetti Theorem’. The second concerns the capital theory controversy and reswitching of techniques. Pasinetti was the first to disprove the Levhari–Samuelson non-switching theorem. But he is also a system-builder: he has pursued a lifelong investigation into the dynamics of industrial societies with non-proportional growth and structural change by elaborating new analytical tools such as vertically integrated sector analysis, an alternative to input–output analysis. His ‘Separation Theorem’ refers to the separation of basic relations typical of modern societies from relations specific to particular institutions.