ABSTRACT
Heinz Kurz is a major figure in the development of classical economic theory, and a model of theoretical clarity and rigour. I offer this paper as a small token of my appreciation for his many writings on the classical and Sraffian theory of relative prices. As I argue at the end, my findings on the virtual linearity of output–capital ratios and the resulting near-linearity of standard prices and aggregate wage–profit curves leads us back to the price and distribution theories of Ricardo and Marx, not to those of neo-classical economics. In what follows, I will use the term ‘prices of production’ to signify prices which reflect a common rate of profit, and ‘direct prices’ to signify money prices which are proportional to total (direct and indirect) labor requirements, that is proportional to labor values.
