Charasoff and Dmitriev: An analytical characterisation of origins of linear economics

Georg von Charasoff was one of the first economic theorists to recognise that the price of production is an eigenvector of the input matrix, and to determine the rate of profit using its eigenvalue. He anticipated, at this analytical level, most of the arguments that were proposed later in the course of the ‘transformation problem’. This paper aims to reformulate his significant arguments in a formal manner and to reveal their logical relationship by reproducing the mathematical reasoning, so that the logical characteristic of his system can be identified in comparison with Dmitriev's and Bortkiewicz's linear economic system.