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Economic Equilibrium (1870-1914)
There is a sense in which the concept of an economic equilibrium, in which the prices and quantities are determined by the balancing of various forces, permeates the whole of classical economics, from Smith to Ricardo, Mill and Cairnes. This is not, however, the whole story, for two reasons. (l) The classical economists never gave a significant role to demand in determining equilibrium prices. (2) From its origins in Smith's Wealth of Nations classical economics was permeated by a concern with growth and development, the result being that the development of a theory of static equilibrium was a subsidiary theme. It was only in the period after 1870 that a thoroughly worked out system of statics did emerge.
The clearest statement of the nature of economic equilibrium was undoubtedly that of Walras. Though important aspects of it were perceived by both Jevons and Menger, neither developed the concept so thoroughly. More clearly than either his predecessors of his contemporaries, Walras provided a theory of general competitive equilibrium: firms were price takers, and in equilibrium earned only the normal rate of return on capital. Equilibrium prices were determined by on the one hand consumers' maximization of utility, and on the other by the technical coefficients describing the ability of firms to transform inputs into outputs. Although neglected in England, Walras obtained influential followers in Europe, the most important being Pareto and Wicksell. It was Pareto who removed the theory's dependence of utility, arguing that the essence of the problem of economic equilibrium was "the opposition between men's tastes and the obstacles to satisfying them". Wicksell, on the other hand, integrated Walras's theory of equilibrium with BohmBawerk's theory of capital, extending it to provide a marginal productivity theory of distribution.
Very different was the Marshallian approach, not so much because of Marshall's preference for partial as opposed to general equilibrium analysis, as because of his preference for a more realistic form of analysis. Being wary of excessive abstraction, Marshall's equilibrium was not the static, perfectly competitive equilibrium of Walras, Pareto and Wicksell: in it firms were continually evolving, old firms gradually being replaced by new; there were imperfections of competition; and some of the changes which occurred when firms moved along their supply curves were irreversible. Though not too much should be read into this. Mar shall s use of the term normal profit" rather than "zero profit" as his condition for market equilibrium is symptomatic of his approach. Fur¬thermore, his preference for short chains of reasoning and his desire for realism worked against his analysing the logic of a general competitive equilibrium in the same way as his European contemporaries. His de¬scription of a full competitive equilibrium is brief. There was also a third approach to the question of competitive equilibrium, one which though not influential at the time, became important in the 1950s. This was Edgeworth's analysis of competition in terms of bargaining. Starting with a bargain between two individuals he derived the contract curve, showing that the competitive equilibrium was one point on this curve. By gradu¬ally increasing the number of individuals involved in the bargain Edgeworth was able to show that as the size of the economy increased so the contract curve shrank towards the competitive equilibrium. Competi¬tive equilibrium could thus be interpreted as the only feasible outcome in a bargain between an infinitely large number of individuals.