On the monotonicity of the labour-capital ratio in Sraffa's model (Q908831)

The authors consider Sraffa's simple production model and demonstrate by examples of primitive (irreducible and aperiodic) technology matrices of production coefficients that even for a single technology the labour- capital ratio while varying continuously in the profit rate may not be monotonic if the dimension of the technology matrix exceeds 2. In the reswitching debate non-continuous non-monotonicity has been demonstrated in the case of two competing technologies. Given the generically ``wavy'' nature of Sraffa's frontier in the case of a single technology, non- monotonicity of the labour-capital ratio should come as no surprise; yet, for low dimension, examples are non-trivial.