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Abstract
In the last issue of SEHR, Jonas Ljungberg carried out an analysis, based on his price history studies, of various methods of measuring economic/industrial transformation.1 In the main the article opposes two methodological approaches against each other, the one referring to the works of Josefsson/Örtengren and consisting of the measuring of transformation pressure in the diffusion of relative prices over fixed demarcated periods, and the other alluding to the work of Gerschenkron and measuring transformation by means of a running coupling of variously-constructed indices of price movements. The comments on Ljungberg's methods and results which follow are intended as a criticism of his very imprecise use of the concept of the “Gerschenkron effect” and thus of the concept of transformation. They are not to be construed as an opinion on the general question of methodology, where we entirely share Ljungberg's view as to the general fruitfulness of using index calculations in an historical analysis.