ABSTRACT
Von Neumann’s paper on economic growth was originally published in German in 1937 in Karl Menger’s Ergebnisse eines mathematischen Kolloquiums and then, on the initiative of Nicholas Kaldor, translated into English and published in the Review of Economic Studies in 1945, accompanied by a commentary by David Champernowne (1945). From Champernowne’s commentary, we learn that Sraffa had seen von Neumann’s paper when Champernowne prepared his piece.
However, until recently, we did not know whether Sraffa had already worked on problems such as joint production and the choice of technique – problems that figure prominently in von Neumann’s contribution – prior to his acquaintance with the paper, and, if he had, what his results had been. We were thus also unable to say whether von Neumann’s contribution had left any discernible traces in Sraffa’s preparatory manuscripts, which were to grow into his 1960 book.
