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The Rise and Fall of the Concept of Equilibrium in Economic Analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2016

Philip Mirowski
Philip Mirowski*
Affiliation:
Tufts University
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Summary

Une appréhension adéquate du concept d’équilibre en économie implique qu’il soit resitué dans le contexte de l’histoire intellectuelle tant de la physique que de l’économie. Dans cette perspective, la notion d’Equilibre Général, concept-pivôt de la théorie néo-classique, se révèle anachronique, pour des raisons à la fois “internes” et “externes à l’histoire de la pensée et des méthodes économiques. Les difficultés internes sont examinées à l’aide des catégories d’Invariants, d’Existence, d’Unicité et de Stabilité. L’article se termine par une évocation des travaux de Benoit Mandelbrot comme exemple d’un discours économique qui, tout en étant d’une grande sophistication mathématique, ne repose pas sur la notion d’équilibre.

      You don't see something until you have the right metaphor to perceive it. R. Shaw, quoted in Gleick (1987), p. 262.
      When you reach an equilibrium in biology you're dead. Arnold Mandell, quoted in Gleick (1967), p. 298.

The concept of “equilibrium” in economics can only be understood by situating it in the context of the intellectual history of physics and economics. Once contextualized, it becomes apparent that the organizing neoclassical metaphor of general equilibrium is in fact grown dowdy and anachronistic, for reasons both “internal” and “external” to the history of economic thought and method. After surveying the internal difficulties under the categories of Invariants, Existence, Uniqueness and Stability, we close with the example of the writings of Benoit Mandelbrot as a representative of sophisticated mathematical non-equilibrium discourse in economics.

Keywords

020021030020021030
Type
Research Article
Information
Recherches Économiques de Louvain/ Louvain Economic Review , Volume 55 , Issue 4 , 1989 , pp. 447 - 468
Copyright
Copyright © Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de recherches économiques et sociales 1989 

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Footnotes

*

This paper was written with the assistance of a grant from National Endowment for the Humanities, for which the author is grateful. Comments of the participants at a conference entitled “Journées d’étude sur la notion d’équilibre” at the University of Louvain, May 1989 were very helpful.

References

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