Profile Major Works Resources

Gaëtan Pirou, 1886-1945

French economist at the faculty of law at the University of Paris, and editor of the Revue d'economie politique.

Gaëtan Pirou's principal claim to fame is as a teacher and historian of economic theory.  Although trained in the French historical tradition, his mission was to bring economic theory back into the French university curriculum, moving away from the political parables of the Liberals and the descriptive treatment of the Historicists, by putting French students in touch with the theoretical advances abroad, most notably the Austrians, the Lausanne School and the American Institutionalists.  However, Pirou's own training was unable to keep up with the accelerating mathematization of the 1930s, and so his efforts turned out to be of more doctrinal-historical than contemporary value.  Nonetheless, Piriou was a master of scholarship and exposition and took French economics a large (if incomplete) step forward. Pirou is particularly credited for resurrecting interest in the work of Leon Walras and "discovering" the importance of Auguste Walras.

 

  


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Major Works of Gaëtan Pirou

  • Les doctrines économiques en France depuis 1870, 1925 [ucaq, pdf]
  • Georges Sorel, 1847-1922, 1927
  • Doctrines sociales et science économique, 1929 [ucaq, pdf]
  • Introduction à l'étude de l'économie politique, 1929
  • L'Utilité marginale de C. Menger à J. B. Clarke, 1932 (2nd ed., 1938)
  • Les Théories de l'équilibre économique: L. Walras et V. Pareto, 1934 (2nd. ed. 1938)
  • Le Corporatisme, 4 vols, 1935
  • Les Nouveaux courants de la théorie économique aux Etats-Unis, 4 vols, 1935-39
  • La Monnaie française depuis la guerre 1919-1936, 1936
  • La Monnaie française de 1936 a 1938, 1938
  • "Preface", 1938, in reprint of A Walras, Nature de la Richesse
  • Traité d'économie politique, 1942
  • La Valeur et les Prix, 1948

 


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Resources on Gaëtan Pirou  

 

 
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