ABSTRACT
In the preface to Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities Sraffa claimed that he had not introduced any assumption on returns in that book since it was not concerned with changes either in the scale of production or in the proportions with which the ‘factors of production’ are employed. The effects of these changes on the costs of production were instead at the centre of the stage in his 1920s critique of Marshall’s supply functions. The objective of his long 1925 essay, published in Italian in Annali di Economia and briefly summarized at the start of his 1926 article in the Economic Journal,1 was to examine the ability of Marshall’s competitive partial analysis to provide an adequate treatment of the relevant connection between costs and quantities.
