I do not consider myself as a circuitist and I cannot boast of being an expert of Augusto Graziani’s thinking. However, while writing this post I realized that the extent of his direct and indirect influence on my work has been probably greater than I previously thought. I was lucky
I was trained in a mainstream economics department (UCLA), and as a result came to circuit theory backwards. In graduate school I was frustrated by the superficial treatment of money in the mainstream models, which didn’t even try to engage with what money is, with its relationship to the banking
I was not a student of Graziani’s, although I prepared my undergraduate micro and macro exams on the first version of his texts. As a young researcher I was later placed as his ‘teaching assistant’: it was an experience I still look back on with affection. We shared hundreds of
I met Augusto Graziani for the first time in the early 1980s. He was then already a highly renowned economic theorist, particularly famous for his contributions to monetary economic theory, whilst I was a freshly appointed professor of economics at the University of Bremen. Graziani was a most pleasant and
There have been critics of Neoclassical economics virtually since its inception in the 1870s: the very word was coined by Veblen as a term of ridicule rather than of praise (Pratten 2023, p. 63). But despite this, Neoclassical interpretations of economic concepts still permeate the minds of its critics. As
Meetings I first met Augusto Graziani and became aware of him at the 1984 Trieste summer school, which gathered key post-Keynesian and Sraffian scholars for nearly a decade. The other participants to the summer school, listening to the various lectures and round tables, were doctoral students or young teachers like
Graziani’s theory of the monetary circuit, which combines an elegant simplicity with analytical power, has exerted a lasting influence on scholars of monetary economics. The theory provides a solid foundation on which to analyse the ongoing evolution of the financial system. In particular, it is a useful starting point for
I met Augusto Graziani only once. This was in 1994 during a three-day conference at the University of Bergamo organised by Riccardo Bellofiore. The conference’s subject was the third volume of Marx’s Capital on the occasion of its centenary appearance. (Much of Parts Four and Five of this unfinished work
I believe I first came across Professor Graziani’s work when I was writing a paper for Professor Hyman Minsky’s course on money. I was interested in the raging debate between Tom Asimakopulos and a number of Post Keynesians over the investment-saving relation. (Asimakopulos 1983, 1985, 1986) While he accepted Keynes’s
Introduction It is truly an honour for me to have been invited to write and share these words about a man whose ideas influenced my own in countless ways, and, it must be said, was truly one of the nicest and most generous persons I have ever met. With Alain
Being a failed banker gives an unusual perspective on monetary theory, in particular on the monetary ideas of Augusto Graziani (1933-2014). By ‘failed banker’, I do not mean the ruined financier of popular legend, the Saccard or John Gabriel Borkman, the collapse of whose Ponzi schemes was so memorably analysed
In this article, the author reminisces about a cherished relationship with Augusto Graziani, a fellow dissenting economist, academic colleague and friend for almost three decades, by identifying what united them on both a personal level and intellectually, as well as by highlighting some very minor, but lingering, differences in macroeconomic
While the theory of the economic process as a set of simultaneous exchanges seems specifically made to outline a classless society, the idea of the economic process as a circuit immediately leads to identifying the class distinction within the economic process. Graziani 1977, p. 116 (translated from the Italian) The
Tribute appeared in Heterodox Economics Newsletteron January 2014 It is difficult to write a “tribute” to Augusto Graziani, remembering his warning that writing the obituary of a University professor gives the person writing it a great opportunity to self-promote.This tribute is intended solely to provide scholars who are not familiar
1 Augusto Graziani made very important contributions to various aspects of academic life. He committed himself to the Departments with vigor and impartiality. He defended the need of young people to have adequate research training. He organized countless meetings in which he decisively defended his ideas. A young researcher with
Augusto Graziani: an ‘untimely’ economist Riccardo Bellofiore Augusto Graziani (1933-2014) was one of the last representatives of an original post-WWII Italian tradition, capable of novel and critical contributions, opposed to traditional approaches fostering conformism. Graziani was President of the Italian Economic Association (1998-2001) and Senator of the Italian Republic (1992-1994,