Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I The models of the mature phase
- Part II The models of the phase of decline
- 15 The structure of the barter model of written pledges markets
- 16 Disequilibrium features of the barter model of written pledges markets
- 17 The written pledges markets in the last comprehensive model
- 18 The markets for circulating capital and money in the last comprehensive model.
- 19 Conclusion
- References
- Collation of editions of the Eléments
- Index
19 - Conclusion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I The models of the mature phase
- Part II The models of the phase of decline
- 15 The structure of the barter model of written pledges markets
- 16 Disequilibrium features of the barter model of written pledges markets
- 17 The written pledges markets in the last comprehensive model
- 18 The markets for circulating capital and money in the last comprehensive model.
- 19 Conclusion
- References
- Collation of editions of the Eléments
- Index
Summary
Walras's great achievement was to develop his mature models of market behavior, in connection with which he constructed or refined many of the building blocks of modern economic theory. He developed a technique of modeling by specifying the parameters, structure and behavior of market models, by designing their equilibrating processes, by identifying their equilibrium conditions, and by studying their comparative static properties. He influenced his contemporaries and he persuaded subsequent generations of economists of the value of the general-equilibrium approach to the study of economics.
Contributions to the modeling of markets
When Walras began his investigations in 1868, economics in Europe was hardly a scientific pursuit but rather a mixture of normative prescriptions, classical theories expressed alongside protectionist doctrines, and commercial law. In England, it was in the state exemplified by the work of John Stuart Mill – with much that could be used as a basis for future investigations, but also without a clear view of the relationships of distribution and production, limited by a cost of production theory of value, without consumer demand functions derived from preference functions, and lacking a theory of supply and demand in markets that are related to other markets. The attitude of most of Walras's contemporaries was that since economic behavior involves preferences and the human will, it cannot be modeled, and certainly not described by equations, which were regarded as rigid and deterministic. Walras changed all that, transforming the way that economics was studied on the Continent.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Walras's Market Models , pp. 420 - 426Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996