This article contributes to the explanation of the methodological differences between Cournot and Walras when these authors apply mathematics to economics. Our article explains the reasons behind Cournot’s refusal when Walras required him to write an article, which advocates the application of...

Poverty was an ubiquitous theme in the literature of the beginning of the 19th century, and its analysis shifted from political or charitable perspectives to embrace a young science, namely the political economy. Stendhal’s example shows how political economy had become the only legitimate...

We study the willingness of some authors, including H. Varian in the 70’s, to elaborate a theory of justice that would fit standard general equilibrium theory in its Pareto’s canonical version. We first show, through an analysis of market socialism in the 30’s, that the Paretian ethic is...

Alfred Marshall is most famous for his contribution to the neoclassical thought than to the evolutionary one. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the theoreticallegimacy of the biological metaphor in the writings of Alfred Marshall

We discuss the traditional interpretation of Edgeworth’s conception of competition neo-Walrasian authors developed following the Debreu-Scarf ’s theorem legacy. This interpretation presents Edgeworth as the forerunner of the cooperative-games approach based on the notion of the core as a...

This article studies the role of the businessmen in Marshall’s views on the progress towards the social ideal. The analysis is grounded on a perfectionist reappraisal of the Marshallian principle of justice supported by an historical perspective and some of Marshall’s unpublished papers. It...

Character is commonly recognised as a crucial notion in Alfred Marshall’s thought, and more broadly in Victorian thought. However, this concept is never intrinsically defined. This paper offers an intellectual reconstruction of the notion of character in Marshall’s thought. While not denying...

This contribution argues that Menger’s Grundsätze ground economic subjectivism in cognitive features. It elaborates on need-satisfaction in relation with the use value of goods. It details the various forms raised for utility in Menger’s texts and distinguishes between both Grundsätze...

This paper addresses Johann Heinrich von Thünen's income distribution theory (1850), highlighting the way the author develops his solution to the aforementioned problem -i.e. his well-known "natural wage" formula ap - by means of four different mathematical proofs, whose assumptions, purposes,...

Most of Schumpeter’s commentators admit Nietzsche’s influence on the Schumpeterian conception of the entrepreneur. Nevertheless, from our point of view, this influence is often treated in the historical context and in a very limited definition of the entrepreneur. In this article, we argue...