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Gérard Debreu’s Values: Axioms and Anecdotes

Including a Symposium on the Historical Epistemology of Economics

ISBN: 978-1-78714-538-2, eISBN: 978-1-78714-537-5

Publication date: 15 September 2017

Abstract

Economic ideas are the product of contemplation, but also of our economic lives. In the history of ideas, Gérard Debreu’s shining book of 1959, Theory of Value, represents the pinnacle of purity in contemplating economic life. Rather than contextualizing this oeuvre through his intellectual life, as is usually done, this essay describes his axiomatic analysis by contextualizing it through his economic life. What do we learn about Debreu’s axioms on consumption when thinking of his own consumption? What do we learn about his theory of value when thinking of his own values? Historiographically, this approach permits the use of a widely neglected source in the history of economics: anecdotes. Epistemologically, blending axioms and anecdotes offers a description of how axioms regulate an economic discourse. Finally, this essay offers a language for the material dimensions of economic life that are so underexposed in Debreu’s own work.

Keywords

Citation

Düppe, T. (2017), "Gérard Debreu’s Values: Axioms and Anecdotes ", Including a Symposium on the Historical Epistemology of Economics (Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, Vol. 35A), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 85-111. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0743-41542017000035A005

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2017 Emerald Publishing Limited