STOREP is pleased to announce that the 2025 STOREP grant for innovative small-scale research projects is awarded to
Vinicius Zuniga Fagotti (Sapienza Università di Roma)
“Further developments in premature stagnation modeling and in the use of Sraffa’s equations for development economics”
Keywords: models of stagnation; Sraffian equations; Celso Furtado; structural change.
JEL Codes: O11; E11; B51; O41; O14
Project outline
Following from previous works on the theory and method of Furtado and Sraffa, and of a soon to be completed roadmap for modeling stagnation and development pitfalls based on the two traditions, the research project aims at finalizing the formal modeling for the phenomenon of premature stagnation.
This entails collecting insights identified with the following problems on development and weaving them together with greater precision: the problem of reproducibility and a of negative net output in key industries in Sraffa’s schemes; the problem of the tendency of the maximum rate of profit to fall following forced mechanization; the matter of premature regression as a means to restore accumulation; the oligopolized solution and the sharpening of conflict over income; and the non-basic nature of rapid and late industrialization, akin to the bean economy in Sraffa’s freak case.
As has been already shown, all of the above phenomena can be formalized with recourse to matrix algebra and to the problems related to changes in the technological matrix dimension and its dominant eigenvalue (Fagotti, 2025). What remains to be done is a comprehensive investigation into mathematical properties and results that may shed light on the theoretically rich, and formally plausible propositions regarding the above traps to development.
If the research is to be undertaken, its main objective is to provide a more precise reading on the tensions in intersectoral interdependences, providing a greater degree of accuracy in understating how new industries articulate production and the generation of value and prices, in the context of a shock to the structure of production, conceptualized here as forced and rapid industrialization. Importantly, from these intersectoral tensions, the identification of bottlenecks hindering change should become possible. As these represent the forces leading towards premature stagnation – premature in the sense of taking place prior to the maturing of the economy, stagnation in terms of the process of change and growth – their identification and proper modelling is of great value for development economics and growth economics; apart from obviously contributing to the developing of both Sraffian and Furtadian schools.
Mario Cedrini