The author seeks to demonstrate that the price system proposed by Piero Sraffa in his major work Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities - Prelude to a Critique of Economic Theory is compatible with both David Ricardo and Karl Marx’s labour embodied theory of value and with Adam Smith’s labour-commanded theory of value. In reality, Sraffa’s measure of prices, the Standard Commodity, satisfies rigorously the mathematical condition of invariability in relation to income distribution between wages and profits. In this sense, it offers a consistent solution to the transformation problem of embodied labour values into production prices. Besides, the Standard ratio or the maximum rate of profits R can be used to analyse the evolution of the three major types or forms of technical progress in a capitalist economy, as follows: labour-using, neutral and capital-using techniques.

Resumo O artigo examina a visão de Bresser-Pereira sobre distribuição de renda, apresentada em seu livro Lucro, Acumulação e Crise, a respeito da ligação entre a taxa de lucro e a taxa de juros. O autor apresenta uma abordagem alternativa a partir das contribuições recentes de Carlo Panico e Massimo Pivetti, ambos da Universidade de Nápoles. O modelo de Panico enfatiza os elementos de risco-retorno e o aspecto de “armazenamento de valor”, outra função importante desempenhada pelo dinheiro, que afeta a distribuição de renda dos capitalistas industriais, trabalhadores e banqueiros. O autor também discute a metodologia de formação de preços quando a mudança técnica é apresentada, alegando que o modelo de Sraffa é mais adequado para entender a evolução da taxa de lucro no longo prazo.

This is a reply to the criticisms raised by William Jefferies (Jefferies, 2020) to my article “Sraffa and the Labour Theory of Value: a note” (Araujo, 2019). In Jefferies (2020) the author has given great emphasis to the question of physical commensurability between input and output in Sraffa’s price model.