Introduction: Economics and Other Branches – in the Shade of the Oak Tree: Essays in Honour of Pascal Bridel

In one of his notes d’humeur – casual annotations scribbled on a piece of paper – Léon Walras once wrote:

One must know what one is doing. If one wants to harvest promptly, one should plant carrots and salads; if one has the ambition to plant oak trees, one must be wise enough to say: [posterity] will owe me this shade. ¹

This formula is famous among Walrasian scholars: ‘carrots’ and ‘salads’ are good only for those working under the limiting framework of partial analysis; while those working, like Walras, on general equilibrium stay wisely ‘in the shade of the oak tree’.