This compelling book contains a comprehensive analytical treatment of the theory of production in a long-period framework. Although the authors take a 'Classical' approach to their subject, the scope of investigation and methods employed should interest all economic theorists. Professors Kurz and Salvadori explore economic systems that are characterised by a particular kind of primary input in the production process, such as different kinds of labour and natural resources. These systems and the corresponding prices can be understood to reflect characteristic features of a capitalist market economy in an ideal way: they express the pure logic of the relationship between value and distribution in an economic system. Specific chapters deal with prices and income distribution, economic growth, joint production, fixed capital, scarce natural resources (both renewable and exhaustible), and heterogeneous labour. The historical origins of the concepts used are also discussed in considerable detail.

In this paper we give a sufficient and almost necessary condition for the existence of optimal strategies in linear multisector models when time is continuous, consumption is limited to one commodity, the instantaneous utility is of the CES type, and available technology allows a positive growth rate.

The paper discusses Sraffa's interpretation of the classical economists and, following their lead, his elaboration of an objectivist, surplus-based theory of value and distribution. The emphasis is on the twin concepts of physical real costs and social surplus on the one hand and that of a circular flow of production on the other. In order to determine relative prices within such an analytical scheme, the tool of simultaneous equations is indispensable. It is then argued that fixed capital turned out to be a formidable obstacle: whereas the circulating part of capital allows one to entertain the idea of a material-cum-value transmigration into the product, this idea loses much of its appeal with regard to the durable part. Sraffa eventually overcame the difficulty in terms of the joint-products approach.

This paper discusses the roots of input-output analysis in 'classical' economics. The authors considered include Petty and Cantillon; Quesnay, the physiocrats and their critic Isnard; Smith, Ricardo, Torrens and Dmitriev; Marx, von Bortkiewicz and von Charasoff; Leontief; and Remak. It is argued that, in terms of method and content, input-output analysis is akin to the classical approach to the theory of production, distribution and relative prices in that (i) it requires all magnitudes to be observable and (ii) starts essentially from the same set of data. It is shown that many important modern concepts have been anticipated by the earlier authors. The prehistory of input-output analysis is also meant to provide new perspectives on potential future developments of the field.Circular Flow, Classical Economics, Reproduction Surplus Product, Value And Distribution,

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