ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the developments of economic thought in France between 1870 and World War I. After several decades of institutional and intellectual dominance, liberal thinking was on the wane and was challenged from many sides. The creation of new academic journals and the expansion of political economy in French universities largely benefit to a new generation of economists who are open to interventionist, protectionist or social ideas, and a part of which is turning towards empiricism and history. Charles Gide, Paul Cauwès, Clément Juglar, and Albert Aftalion, among others, belong to this new generation and embody these new insights. The chapter concludes with a presentation of the decisive contributions to economic analysis of some engineers-economists – Clément Colson, Marcel Lenoir – and mathematicians – Maurice Potron, Joseph Bertrand, Louis Bachelier – over the period.
