ABSTRACT
Walras was the Beethoven of general equilibrium theory, Edgeworth the Mozart. Walras was solid, heavy, architectural, a builder of grand structures. Edgeworth was light, mercurial, inventive, a spinner of brilliant ideas. Each started with utility maximisation and the tool of marginal utility. Edgeworth took the concept straight from Jevons but Walras, with some help from his colleague Antoine Picard, 1 had independently discovered it in 1872 and remained jealous of Jevons’s priority. Adding in Menger, we have an instance of that ‘simultaneous discovery’ which often seems to occur in the sciences (see Chapter 18 on Alfred Russel Wallace) when a new approach is in the air.
