An Error in the Interpretation of Sraffa's 'Standard Commodity'

Abstract

Piero Sraffa's masterpiece, The Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities, is written in a remarkably terse style and presents many problems of interpretation and understanding. The role of the Standard commodity in Sraffa's work is one contentious area in interpretations. This paper shows that M. Reder made mathematical errors on this topic in an early review of Sraffa's book. Mark Blaug took up one of these errors and inserted it in successive editions of his well-known textbook on the history of economic thought and in a New Palgrave entry. Heinz D. Kurz and Neri Salvadori point out this error in an exercise in their textbook on the theory of production and in a later paper. Finally, this paper points out Blaug's recent acknowledgement of this error, leading to the likelihood of its removal from at least his textbook in future editions. Nearly half a century after the publication of Sraffa's book, the error described in this paper might be removed from the textbook containing it.