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

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.