ABSTRACT
I am interested in dynamic systems, and Giovanni Caravale was himself a dynamic system. The area of his thought which I observed closely was one of his most dynamic: his work on the concept of equilibrium. If an autobiographical note may be excused in an academic paper by the nature of the present occasion, I first gave a seminar on the character of equilibrium appropriate to different ‘periods’, in Perugia over twenty years ago when Gianni was professor there; then he asked me first to give a seminar in the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’ in 1994, when again I spoke about equilibrium, and later to join in a session on the topic at the Eastern Economic Association meeting in Washington in 1997. The ideas of the Perugia paper were eventually incorporated in a paper I wrote with Maurizio Caserta (1997), and the Rome seminar generated comments, by Gianni, Claudio Sardoni and others, which were fundamental in shaping my thinking on equilibrium in open systems (Chick 1996), in particular as used by Keynes in the General Theory (Chick 1998 [1996]).
