The Contextual Sources of Slutsky's Effect: 1915, 1927, and After

E. E. Slutsky's enduring but enigmatic fame as an economist far outweighs the limited understanding of most interested scholars as to his very productive life and unusually wide range of research interests. To begin to compensate for this deficit a previousJHET article entitled “E.E. Slutsky: Mathematical Statistician, Economist, and Political Economist?†provided some biographical information on Slutsky's life, together with an account of a few of his little-known contributions to political economy (see Barnett, 2004b). In this current article the inception and immediate influence of Slutsky's two most famous papers in economics written in 1915 and 1927 are considered directly, in addition to further discussion of relevant aspects of Slutsky's life and times. The full significance of the content of the two groundbreaking papers will not be discussed in detail, as this has been adequately covered elsewhere (see for example Barnett 2006, Weber 1999, and Klein 1999). Rather, an attempt will be made to provide a historical and intellectual context for Slutsky's two most important contributions in economics, given that the circumstances surrounding their composition are not sufficiently well known among economists in the West.