Piero Sraffa, 1898-1983. One of the economic giants of the century, Piero Sraffa was at the same time one of the sparest writers of economics - yet each one of his few pieces was tremendous in its turn. Sraffa's 1926 article on returns to scale and perfect competitions (a revised version of his 1925 Italian paper) highlighted a glaring inconsistency in the Marshallian theory of the firm. As he ...