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Walras and the NeoWalrasian Diversion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2009

Manuel Luís Costa
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This paper addresses the question: How did the promising program set out in Leon Walras' mature writings come to be taken as laying the ground for a totally different line of problems in his later writings and in modern microeconomic theory? The study of Walras' mature work (see Walker, 1996) offers an instructive object lesson in the way in which an interesting line of enquiry leads gradually to analytical difficulties and then to “solutions” that evade issues and constitute a major diversion of analysis down roads not initially contemplated by its originator. This paper attempts to trace the development of that detour from the main road of economic analysis in Walras' mature work to the side road of abstract exercises in contemporary neowalrasian literature.

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Journal of the History of Economic Thought , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , March 1998 , pp. 51 - 69
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

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