By the end of 1927, Sraffa, not yet in his thirties, showed Keynes a system of three linear and homogeneous equations to determine prices in an economy without surplus. We now know that these "first equations" were to be the starting point for his future (1960) book. Considered as such, this...

In the first part of Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities</EM>, four equation systems are introduced&colon; three are drawn up in order to solve the problem of relative prices&semi; the last one is devised to define a suitable standard of prices. The book was published in 1960, but--as we are told...

The present article provides a reconstruction of the path followed by Sraffa in the long journey (begun in the late 1920s) which brought him to his 1960 book. The starting point of Sraffa's research was the formulation of his cost-price equations, which surprisingly enough appear to have been...