Re-Switching Production

What is capital? Some say it is machine or factory, some say it is money. When general laymen cannot say it clearly, they can be forgiven. But when economists cannot explain it clearly, they are too sloppy and irresponsible. That is how Joan Robinson blamed them in 1953. Solow (1955), having read her paper, found her comment "out of sheer irritation". For him, capital is simply the aggregation of all investments.To support his view, Solow (1957) produced a perfect production, to show that capital does exist, and is a perfect input for production. That silenced Robinson, for she did not know how to refute such perfect function.It was until 1966 that Samuelson thought he might put an end to this controversy, by writing a paper, which is the content of this volume.Samuelson's paper is entitled Summing Up. But his switching method is more entangling than detangling, for everybody has become twisted by his mathematics.

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