FINDING EQUILIBRIUM

FINDING EQUILIBRIUM explores the post–World War II transformation of economics by constructing a history of the proof of its central dogma—that a competitive market economy may possess a set of equilibrium prices. The model economy for which the theorem could be proved was mapped out in 1954 by Kenneth Arrow and Gerard Debreu collaboratively, and by Lionel McKenzie separately, and would become widely known as the “Arrow-Debreu Model.” While Arrow and Debreu would later go on to win separate Nobel prizes in economics, McKenzie would never receive it. Dueppe and E. Roy Weintraub explore the lives and work of these economists and the issues of scientific credit against the extraordinary backdrop of overlapping research communities and an economics discipline that was shifting dramatically to mathematical modes of expression.

Till Dueppe is assistant professor of economics at the Université du Québec à Montréal.
E. Roy Weintraub is professor of economics at Duke University.