C H A P T E R E I G H T E E N Early General Equilibrium Economics Walras, the founder of the modern theory of general economic equilibrium, was born on December 16, 1834 in Evreux, France, and christened Marie Esprit Léon. Despite his lack of formal credentials in economics | CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Early General Equilibrium Economics Walras Pareto and Cassel Donald A. Walker Léon Walras Background Walras the founder of the modern theory of general economic equilibrium was born on December 16 1834 in Evreux France and christened Marie Esprit Léon. Despite his lack of formal credentials in economics he obtained an appointment at the Academy subsequently University of Lausanne in 1870 and remained there for his entire career. He retired in 1892 and died on January 5 1910 in Clarens Switzerland for biographical information see Jaffé 1935 for bibliographical information see Walker 1987 A. and L. Walras 1987- . Walras s mature comprehensive model Competition Walras was the first economist to construct a complete general equilibrium model the mature comprehensive model set forth in the second edition of the Eléments 1889 . It is called comprehensive because it encompasses exchange production consumption capital formation and money and mature to differentiate it from the models in the first and fourth editions. In that model Walras not only Early General Equilibrium Economics 279 expressed the belief that all economic phenomena are interrelated which had been done by many economists before him he also specified their interrelations studied their disequilibrium behavior and described their conditions of equilibrium. One of Walras s fundamental methodological convictions was that the assumptions of a theory must be drawn very carefully from empirical reality 1896b p. 10 and one of his principal objectives as an economic theorist was to understand the behavior of the markets that functioned in the economy of his time. His study of empirical reality convinced him that free competition in regard to exchange is the almost universal regime Walras 1965 vol. 2 letter 999 pp. 434-5 practiced on all markets with more or less precision and therefore with less or more frictions Walras 1895 p. 630 and so he drew the assumption of a purely .
