Wolfgang Mühlpfordt and the ‘transformation problem’: some remarks on articles by Howard and King and Gilibert

Abstract

Until recently, the name of Wolfgang Mühlpfordt (1872-1928) was certainly not among those a theoretical economist was expected to know. Mühlpfordt has now been rehabilitated not only in the Cambridge Journal of Economics (Howard and King: 1987 and Gilibert:1991), but also in the German Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik (Quaas:1991). There are many points of correspondence between my own interpretation and the assessments of Mühlpfordt by Gilibert and by Howard and King. However, I believe it is possible to add some further remarks and also to make some corrections. We do not know why Mühlpfordt did not react to Bortkiewicz's famous articles (1907), to which he would certainly have had something to say. Mühlpfordt was more advanced than Bortkiewicz, since his mathematical approach is of more general validity and he prepared the way for the modern theory of production prices which is now associated with, among others, the name of Piero Sraffa.transformation problem; Wolfgang Mühlpfordt; Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz; labour theory of value