/lit/ - Literature

any books that discuss the postmodern character of neoclassical economics?
>value isn't objective
>prices carry unreliable and probably mistaken views about market conditions present and future
>asset prices are literally predictions of other people's predictions
>complete disconnect between fundamentals and financial markets
>everything is a narrative
even their own textbooks advise the student not to take scenarios presented therein too seriously for they serve as illustration of mechanisms and are not real life situations

Did you get filtered by him?

Who was the greatest economist of all time and why is it Leon Walras?

Is this guy and Pareto the best economic duo the world has ever seen?

>>14523532
The Auctioneer

Which aspect of economics is better in your opinion? The unbiased scientific, mathematical kind?

Or the 'prescriptive remedies for the helping of the population' kind?

Post what you are currently reading and what you will be reading after.

Polymath coming through.

Currently:

Primary slot (read once per day): Ibn Al-Haytham - Completion of the Conics
Secondary slot (read once every two days or so) Leon Walras - Elements of Pure Economics
Third slot (read after a heavy binge of the first two): Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison - The Federalist Papers
Fourth slot (read once every week): Nicomachus - Introduction to Arithmetic

After:

Primary slot gets taken by Laws by Plato after Completion is finished. After Completion is finished, I will move fourth slot up to the secondary slot and everything else down by one.

Secondary slot gets taken by Mathematical Investigations into the Theory of Value and Price by Irving Fisher

Third slot gets taken by Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville

Fourth slot gets taken by The Almagest.

So, have any economists here read Leon Walras' work on economics? What do you think?

I've been reading it, and I do like it... it's just... I'm not averse to proofs and there is something about this book....

Leon Walras will introduce a set of new variables and define them and through logic, the new variables indeed make sense. But then something happens.

He introduces two matricies. For each matrix there will be a column of one variable he will take out of one matrix, and substitute it into the first equality by multiplying this one variable he took out by the variable representing equality with that row of the matrix.

Then he will proceed to do the same thing with the other equation. In other words, here is what Leon Walras does.

Blahblahblahblah, so x = this and y = that

Then he follows it up with a quantity matrix

aX + aY + aZ = qAlpha
bX + bY + bZ = qBeta
......
zX + zY + zZ = qZeta

And then watch out here comes the other matrix. This is usually the price matrix

p(a) = (a)Alpha + (a)Beta .... + (a)Zeta
p(b) = (b)Alpha + (b)Beta .... + (b)Zeta
....
p(z) = (z)Alpha + (z)Beta .... + (z)Zeta

Anyway these are the two matrices. Now he will proceed to take X Y, and Z out of the first three columns of the matrix respectively and again respectively multiply them by p(a), p(b), and p(z) (the left side equality of the second matrix)

Then after that, he takes Alpha, Beta, and Zeta out of the following matrix, and again respectively multiplies them by the first three equations, this time on the right side.

Anyway, he then adds them all up and says he is genius because

p(a)X + p(a)Y + p(a)Z + p(b)X + p(b)Y + p(b)Z + p(z)X + p(z)Y + p(z)Z = qAlpha + qBeta + qZeta

WOAH MIND BLOWN AND YOU CAN CANCEL OUT THE COUNTLESS a+b+z ON BOTH SIDES OF THE EQUATION BECAUSE GUESS WHAT.... THEY EQUAL EACH OTHER....

I mean, Walrasian economics has its strong points but this, and the fact that he thinks somehow scarcity is equal to value are the worst.

>>10500794
It's simple really. He is saying that Leon Walras' principle of 'Rarete', or individual pricing based on psychological principles should never have necessarily been applied to mathematics.

He probably resonates more with Carl Menger's treatment of the subject, if at all.

Does that help or do you need to read more?

ITT post what you're currently reading and what you will be reading after

Apollonius - On Conics (on book III)
Léon Walras - Elements of Pure Economics
Plato - Essential Dialogues (B&N edition)

Reading after:
Ibn Al-Haytham - On Completion of the Conics
Irving Fisher - Mathematical Investigations into Value and Price
Jean-Jacques Rousseau - The Social Contract

>>9160028
UMMMMMMMMM