IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/cambje/v31y2007i2p291-307.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

On the application of mathematics to political economy'. The Edgeworth--Walras--Bortkievicz controversy, 1889--1891

Author

Listed:
  • Roberto Marchionatti

Abstract

In the period of the first spread and consolidation of mathematical economics there was impotant debate on Walras's theory of exchange involving Edgeworth, Walras and Bortkievicz directly, and Marshall indirectly. The dispute may be traced back to issues involving the role of abstract reasoning and the use of mathematics in economics. The discussion reveals the clash of different methodological requirements: on the one hand, there is Walras's requirement of rigour and simplicity allowed by the reduction of economics to mathematical treatment; on the other hand, there is Edgeworth's requirement of greater realism in the model. Copyright 2007, Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Roberto Marchionatti, 2007. "On the application of mathematics to political economy'. The Edgeworth--Walras--Bortkievicz controversy, 1889--1891," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 31(2), pages 291-307, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:cambje:v:31:y:2007:i:2:p:291-307
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/cje/bel024
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Pascal Bridel & Elisabeth Huck, 2002. "Yet another look at Leon Walras's theory of tatonnement," The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(4), pages 513-540.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Marchionatti, Roberto & Mornati, Fiorenzo, 2014. "Economic Theories in Competition. A New Narrative of the Debate on General Economic Equilibrium Theory in the 1930s," CESMEP Working Papers 201404, University of Turin.
    2. Marchionatti, Roberto & Sella, Lisa, 2015. "Is Neo-Walrasian Macroeconomics a Dead End?," CESMEP Working Papers 201502, University of Turin.
    3. Escudé, Guillermo J., 2021. "La Teoría del Capitalismo de Karl Marx. Exposición, Crítica y Evaluación [Karl Marx's Theory of Capitalism. Exposition, Critique, and Appraisal]," MPRA Paper 105877, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Petri, Fabio, 2016. "Walras on capital: interpretative insights from a review by Bortkiewicz," Centro Sraffa Working Papers CSWP17, Centro di Ricerche e Documentazione "Piero Sraffa".
    5. Franco DONZELLI, 2009. "Edgeworth vs. Walras on equilibrium and disequilibrium," Departmental Working Papers 2009-47, Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods at Università degli Studi di Milano.
    6. Escudé, Guillermo J., 2021. "Karl Marx´s Theory of Capitalism Exposition, Critique, and Appraisal," MPRA Paper 113685, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. stephane verani, 2005. "An Inquiry Into the Causes and Nature of Walras' Theory of Tatonnement," Economic History 0504001, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. stephane verani, 2005. "An Inquiry Into the Causes and Nature of Walras' Theory of Tatonnement," Economic History 0504001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Pascal Bridel & Elisabeth Huck, 2002. "Walras's tatonnement : a reply to Rebeyrol and Costa," The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(4), pages 559-567.
    3. Petri, Fabio, 2016. "Walras on capital: interpretative insights from a review by Bortkiewicz," Centro Sraffa Working Papers CSWP17, Centro di Ricerche e Documentazione "Piero Sraffa".
    4. D. Wade Hands, 2012. "The Rise and Fall of Walrasian Microeconomics: The Keynesian Effect," Chapters, in: Microfoundations Reconsidered, chapter 3, Edward Elgar Publishing.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:cambje:v:31:y:2007:i:2:p:291-307. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/cje .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.