Hardback
Money and General Equilibrium Theory
From Walras to Pareto (1870–1923)
9781858986234 Edward Elgar Publishing
This important book offers a detailed and analytical reconstruction of the pioneering attempts of Walras and Pareto to coordinate money and general equilibrium theory. It argues that the very logic of the original static general equilibrium model excludes the integration of monetary and value theory.
More Information
Critical Acclaim
Contents
More Information
This important book offers a detailed and analytical reconstruction of the pioneering attempts of Walras and Pareto to coordinate money and general equilibrium theory. It argues that the very logic of the original static general equilibrium model excludes the integration of monetary and value theory.
The book presents for the first time the entire Lausanne tradition from Walras to Pareto. Its detailed coverage of the main literature between 1870 and 1923 contributes to the understanding of a central issue in modern general equilibrium theory, that is, the impossibility of coordinating money and price theory with the logic of Walras’s model based on the theory of exchange. It shows how money is prevented from playing its essential role as a social institution in allowing monetary exchanges between individuals. In particular, the discussion focuses on the static nature of Walras’s pure economics and the simultaneous lack of a proper means of exchange. In conclusion it calls for some radical re-thinking on this theoretical construction on which much modern economic theory is based.
Money and General Equilibrium Theory will be welcomed by historians of economic thought, microeconomists and general equilibrium and money theorists.
The book presents for the first time the entire Lausanne tradition from Walras to Pareto. Its detailed coverage of the main literature between 1870 and 1923 contributes to the understanding of a central issue in modern general equilibrium theory, that is, the impossibility of coordinating money and price theory with the logic of Walras’s model based on the theory of exchange. It shows how money is prevented from playing its essential role as a social institution in allowing monetary exchanges between individuals. In particular, the discussion focuses on the static nature of Walras’s pure economics and the simultaneous lack of a proper means of exchange. In conclusion it calls for some radical re-thinking on this theoretical construction on which much modern economic theory is based.
Money and General Equilibrium Theory will be welcomed by historians of economic thought, microeconomists and general equilibrium and money theorists.
Critical Acclaim
‘. . . the book gives a very good idea of what Léon Walras did in the field of pure and applied monetary theory throughout his whole career. In particular, it gives the reader an impression of Walras’s tenacity in trying to find how the economic variables depend on each other and on a number of parameters.’
– Jan van Daal, The Economic Journal
‘. . . there are numerous useful insights and even surprises in this book to reward the reader. . . . It belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in either the development of economic thought in the late 1800s or in the connection between money and general equilibrium.’
– Christian E. Weber, Journal of Economic Literature
– Jan van Daal, The Economic Journal
‘. . . there are numerous useful insights and even surprises in this book to reward the reader. . . . It belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in either the development of economic thought in the late 1800s or in the connection between money and general equilibrium.’
– Christian E. Weber, Journal of Economic Literature
Contents
Contents: Introduction 1. The First Lausanne Decade: General Equilibrium and the Equation of Exchange (1871–1880) 2. Periodical Market, Equation of Exchange and ‘Forced Saving’: Walras’s Applied Theory of Money 3. From the Théorie de la Monnaie to the Etudes d’Économie Politique Appliquée: More Variations on the Same Themes (1886–1898) 4. The Last Monetary Model (1899–1900), or the Ultimate Triumph of Internal Consistency 5. The Fate of a Still-born Tradition: Pareto and After Index