The aim of this paper is to ponder upon Marshall’s conception of equilibrium and to confront it withWalras’s. In a first section, I present a rational reconstruction of the Marshallian conception. In contrast to its standard tripartite classification interpretation, I claim that this...

The notion of frictional unemployment first arose in the writings of Beveridge, Pigou and Hicks. Why did it fail at the time to grow into a fully fledged theory ? Our answer is simple. This failure was due to the fact these economists were unwilling and/or unable to go beyond the then-prevailing...

The standard view about the relation between the Marshallian and the Walrasian approaches is that they are complementary to each other. My aim in this paper is to show that, on the contrary, they constitute alternative sub-research programs within the wider neoclassical paradigm. I make my point...

The emergence of the crisis has given a new impetus to the criticism of economic liberalism. My claim in this paper is that such criticisms will be to no avail as long as the idea of liberalism remains homogenous. It should rather be considered that several degrees of liberalism coexist, which I...

In the many debates concerning economic liberalism, this appears as a monolithic reality. The aim of this paper is to show that this is not the case and that different degrees of liberalism must be distinguished: total liberalism, mitigated liberalism and mitigated anti-liberalism, with...

Have new classicists invented market clearing or have they just rehabilitated it? This is the question addressed in the present paper. It is generally agreed that market clearing underpins Walrasian theory, so my exploration is limited to the question of whether this is also true for Marshallian...

Is the Great Depression amenable to real business cycle theory? In the 1970s and 1980s Lucas and Prescott took an abstentionist stance. They maintained that, because of its exceptional character, an explanation of the Great Depression was beyond the grasp of the equilibrium approach to the...

This paper's aim is to offer a reconstruction of the Marshallian conception of equilibrium and time. Its main features are as follows. First, I argue that the hallmark of this conception is to posit an interrelationship between two equilibrium concepts — market-day and normal equilibrium. I...