ABSTRACT
Of the three founders of marginalism, Marie-Esprit-Léon Walras (1834–1910) was the only one to propose a general equilibrium theory. He owed his vocation as an economist and the foundations of his economic and social thought to his father Auguste Walras. This chapter describes his itinerary from Paris to Lausanne, the components of his “political and social economy”, his methodology and the content of the “pure economics” developed in his Éléments d’économie politique pure – a book which had five editions between 1874–77 and 1926. This chapter also presents Walras’s applied and social economics, two areas which, in his view, make it possible to ensure the concordance (harmony) between the principle of interest (or economic efficiency) and that of equity (or social justice). It concludes with an account of Walras’s relationship with the so-called Lausanne School and some insights on the content of Vilfredo Pareto’s Cours d’économie politique (1896–97).
