Classical thought from the periphery: Homero Cuevas on non- basic goods and the standard commodity MARIO GARCIA - MOLINA AND JULIáN LIBREROS

In 1984, he published “The correct transformation” in Cuadernos de Economía (Cuevas 1984a). This was the Spanish translation of the summary he had sent to Samuelson. As a result of the rewriting process, Cuevas wrote a new paper entirely devoted to Sraffa’s standard commodity, in which he developed previous ideas that had been briefly presented in the context of the transformation problem and Bortkiewicz’s (1907) solution. He published “On Sraffa’s standard commodity” in English in the Brazilian journal Revista de Econometria (Cuevas 1984b),3 and a Spanish version of the same article, “Sraffa, la tasa de ganancia y la economía patrón” [Sraffa, profit rate and the standard commodity] (Cuevas 1985a), in Cuadernos de Economía. The Brazilian publication unleashed a discussion with two professors: Enrique Hoffman, from the Universidade de São Paulo, and Jean Luc Rosinger, from the Universidade de Brasília.4 In 1986, Cuevas published “The Bortkiewicz system, non-basic industries and the rate of profit” (Cuevas 1986b) in Cuadernos de Economía. Also in 1986, 13 years after the first Montreal drafts, the Faculty of Economic Sciences finally printed the book Valor y sistema de precios [Value and price systems] (Cuevas 1986a). A debate was organized at the Universidad Nacional with papers from several Colombian academics, and a bitter controversy ensued (Kalmanovitz and Muñoz 1986; Valdivieso 1986); it will be further discussed below in Section 4. After this period of intense theoretical work, Cuevas devoted more time to applied work on industrialization, agriculture, and coffee (Cuevas 1986c, 1990; Cuevas and Gamarra 1989; see García-Molina 2013 for a complete bibliography), as well as to an introductory economics textbook (Cuevas 1986b). His return to the Classical theory occurred during the second half of the 1990s, with papers on the Leontief Paradox, and on the introduction of human capital in the price system by considering its return as a case of rent (Cuevas 1994, 1995, 1996, 1999). He retired from the Universidad Nacional and became Professor Emeritus in 1997. Apparently, after that retirement, he made a late discovery of Hahn (1982)5 and Duménil and Lévy (1985). Cuevas enjoyed discussing the articles of these authors with his colleagues and students, and returned with full strength to Classical theory. At this point, he published an article on the choice of techniques (Cuevas 2002), a book called La economía clásica en renovación [Renewing classical economics] (Cuevas 2001a), and articles on growth and prices of resources (Cuevas 2001b, 2003b, 2001c), as well as a second edition of Value and price systems (Cuevas 2003a). His emeritus status notwithstanding, Cuevas was again appointed as dean at the Universidad Nacional (2002-2004). Thereafter he spent the rest of his life at the Universidad Externado. In 2008, he went for a short stay to the Università degli Studi di Roma Tre, to meet Pierangelo Garegnani. In his last years, he was interested in the theory of entrepreneurs and in imperialism (Cuevas 2000a, 2002, 2006, 2008, 2011). This period also saw a closure of the discussions of the early 1980s and a rapprochement with Kalmanovitz. He delivered his last manuscript, a book called El poder y el mercado en la economía internacional [Power and market in the international economy] (Cuevas 2014) just before he passed away on the night of December 12, 2012.

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