ABSTRACT
In spite of the very extensive literature which has accumulated over time concerning Piero Sraffa’s theoretical system, several significant issues pertaining to the interpretation of the work of this distinguished economist are still unresolved. In this article we will address some points relating to the period 1925-30, in which Sraffa set out his criticism of Marshall’s theory of value and began to shape the basic theses that would be put forward later in his 1960 book. It is a five-year period which opened with his famous 1925 essay on the relations between cost and quantity produced; continued with the 1926 article in the Economic Journal, on the law of returns, and closed with two short papers in the same review, contributing to the debate promoted by Keynes in 1930 on increasing returns and the representative firm.
