WALRAS, LON

born Dec. 16, 1834, vreux, Fr. died Jan. 5, 1910, Clarens, near Montreux, Switz. in full Marie-esprit-lon Walras French-born economist whose outstanding work, lments d'conomie politique pure (1874-77; Elements of Pure Economics), was one of the first comprehensive mathematical analyses of general economic equilibrium. After twice failing the entrance examination to the cole Polytechnique in Paris for lack of preparation in mathematics, Walras entered the cole des Mines in 1854. Leaving school after a year, he tried literature unsuccessfully. In 1858 his father, the economist Auguste Walras, convinced him to devote his life to economics. Lacking the necessary formal training, however, Walras could not get a university position. After a brief, abortive flirtation with journalism, he worked for several business firms unsuccessfully. Sharing in the popular belief that cooperatives offered an alternative to the revolutionary activity in western Europe, Walras and Lon Say began in 1865 a bank for producers' cooperatives, of which Walras became managing director. The two men also began to publish a monthly journal on cooperatives, Le travail ("Work"), in 1866. Both bank and periodical failed in 1868. In 1870, however, Walras was appointed to the chair of political economy at the Academy of Lausanne, Switz. He retired in 1892. He is generally credited with having founded what subsequently became known, under the leadership of the Italian economist and sociologist Vilfredo Pareto, as the "Lausanne school" of economists. Walras applied techniques for treating systems of simultaneous equations that were well known in classical mechanics to the economic universe. Assuming a "regime of perfectly free competition," Walras constructed a mathematical model in which productive factors, products, and prices automatically adjust in equilibrium. He thus tied together the theories of production, exchange, money, and capital. Walras also postulated reforms that he conceived to be necessary for the effective functioning of the system of free enterprise, notably land nationalization and modification of the gold standard.