On the earliest formulations of Sraffa’s equations

This paper investigates the origins of the equations which form the structure of Piero Sraffa’s 1960 book Production of Commodities by means of Commodities. The question has already been approached during the two decades that have followed the opening of the papers of Piero Sraffa to the public of scholars and the answers put forward have been different and sometimes contrasting, even though every interpreter has acknoledged a central role to Sraffa’s critical stance against subjectivism and marginalist economics and to his attention to alternative approaches.