Biography and career of Leon Walras mathematical economist and georgist

Economic value definition of utility

Léon Walras provides a definition of economic utility based on economic value as opposed to an ethical theory of value:

I state that things are useful as soon as they may serve whatever usage, as soon as they match whatever need and allow its fulfillment. Thus, there is here no point to deal with 'nuances' by way of which one classes, in the language of everyday conversation, utility beside what is pleasant and between the necessary and the superfluous. Necessary, useful, pleasant and superfluous, all of this is, for us, more or less useful. There is here as well no need to take into account the morality or immorality of the need that the useful things matches and permits to fulfill. Whether a substance is searched for by a doctor to heal an ill person, or by a assassin to poison his family, this is an important question from other points of view, albeit totally indifferent from ours. The substance is useful, for us, in both cases, and may well be more useful in the second case than in the first one.In economic theories of value, the term "value" is unrelated to any notions of value used in ethics, they are homonyms.

Legacy

In 1941 George Stigler wrote about Walras:

There is no general history of economic thought in English which devotes more than passing reference to his work.This sort of empty fame in English-speaking countries is of course attributable in large part to Walras's use of his mother tongue, French, and his depressing array of mathematical formulas.

What caused the re-appraisal of Walras's consideration in the US, was the influx of German-speaking scientists – the German version of the Éléments was published in 1881. According to Schumpeter:

Walras is ... greatest of all economists. His system of economic equilibrium, uniting, as it does, the quality of 'revolutionary' creativeness with the quality of classic synthesis, is the only work by an economist that will stand comparison with the achievements of theoretical physics.

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