Robert F. Hébert

In Search of the Meaning of Entrepreneurship

This paper is an attempt to build a bridge between the popular and the academic usage of the terms entrepreneur and entrepreneurship, and to identify the raw materials needed to construct an interpretive framework capable of illuminating the nature of entrepreneurship and its role in economic theory. We review briefly the contributions made to this topic by Cantillon, Schumpeter, Schultz and Kirzner. We advance a ‘synthetic’ definition of the entrepreneur as someone who specializes in taking responsibility for and making judgemental decisions that affect the location, the form, and the use of goods, resources, or institutions. We then conclude with some observations on the basic choice confronting economics regarding the place of entrepreneurship in economic analysis.

The entrepreneur : mainstream views and radical critiques

The place of the entrepreneur in economics the prehistory of entrepreneurship first steps on a new path a fork in the road dead ends, detours and redirections the entrepreneur resurrected. The entrepreneur partitioned the entrepreneur reconstituted the entrepreneur extended the entrepreneur and the firm past, present and future.

Retrospectives: The Origins of Neoclassical Microeconomics

Until recently, the standard story line in history of thought textbooks was that a triumvirate of British and Continental writers established demarcation between classical economics and neoclassical economics in the early 1870s. The authors raise two objections to this potted history. The first is that the tools of neoclassical economics were invented earlier. Recent work has demonstrated that the tools of neoclassical analysis were widely available across Europe well before 1870. The notion that neoclassical economics experienced a tripartite immaculate conception around 1870 cannot stand. The second objection is that the method of neoclassical economics was invented later. As it stands, the legend undervalues the key contribution of Alfred Marshall, who put an indelible stamp on neoclassical economics by defining the appropriate method of economic inquiry. When we refer to neoclassical economics today, we usually mean the collection of tools of economic knowledge available to (and invented by) Marshall, channeled and directed into uses dictated by Marshalls view of economic science. Yet as we shall see, Marshall had an eminent predecessor in method as well, in the person of Jules Dupuit.

Ethics, Engineering, and Natural Monopoly: The “Modern Debate” between Léon Walras and Jules Dupuit

In the 1986 Royer Lectures delivered at the University of California at Berkeley, Amartya Sen (1987) argued that economics sprang from two different origins, both related to politics, but in different ways. The first origin, which Sen calls the ethical approach, goes back at least to Aristotle. It relates economics to human ends and social achievement. The second, which he calls the engineering approach, is concerned primarily with logistical issues. It derives in part from technique-oriented analyses of statecraft, and in part from analyses of technical problems connected with the functioning of markets. Sen claims that Adam Smith was a major protagonist of the first approach, and Léon Walras was a major protagonist of the second. This historical representation reflects a popular misconception about Walras, who is linked to the engineering approach to economics by virtue of his technical contributions to equilibrium theory. This popular view is flawed on two accounts. One, it underestimates the complexity of Walras’s views on economics and thereby obscures his dominant interest

Dupuit and the Railroads

Guy Numa is justified in calling attention to our erroneous translation of a passage from Jules Dupuit’s Dictionnaire article of 1853. His conclusions, however, regarding Dupuit’s “global” policy prescriptions on the operation of railroads, and their semi-convergence with the views of Walras, do not withstand scrutiny when examined against the totality of Dupuit’s economic writings. In this article we reaffirm and defend our body of work that depicts Dupuit as an important advocate of market-based principles in the formation and development of his views on economic policy; and we reject Numa’s claims that Dupuit advocated state control of railroads as the optimal course of action.

E.H. Chamberlin and Contemporary Industrial Organisation Theory

Edward Hastings Chamberlin, a great innovator in economic theory, has been badly served by his “followers”, who have “blanked” and “distorted” his message. Today it is the Chicago critics of monopolistic competition, not his self‐appointed followers at Harvard, who are developing an economics of industrial organisation that more nearly captures the spirit of Chamberlin′s work. Chamberlin′s central insight was that quality dimensions and other means of product differentiation are essential elements (in addition to nominal prices) in the analysis of how economic markets actually work. Although Chamberlin initially tried to fit his theory into the conventional mould of Marshallian economics, with predictably unsatisfactory results, this should not be allowed to obscure the novelty and robustness of his contribution.

Railroads, engineers, and the developement of spatial economics in France

This articles traces a little-known French tradition in spatial economics that was advanced by state engineers who were trained at the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussees and worked for the State Corps engineers. Spurred in part by changes in power technology, especially the advent of the railroad, these engineers pioneered the spatial aspects of competition in a macroeconomic framework. The contribution of Jules Dupuit (1804 - 1866) and Emile Cheysson (1836 - 1910) are especially singled out for analysis, and are shown to have anticipated later important developments in spatial economic theory.

The Intellectual Legacy of Jules Dupuit: A Review Essay

The achievements of Jules Dupuit (1804–1866), French engineer and economist, policymaker and molder of the canon of neoclassical microeconomic theory, are displayed in their entirety through Yves Breton and Gerard Klotz‘s compilation of his collected works, Oeuvres economiques completes (Editions Economica, 2009). This magisterial two-volume set makes available for the first time in a convenient format all of Dupuit‘s major and subsidiary writings, as well as archival material found only in Paris. It is destined to become the locus classicus of Dupuit‘s thought for present and future generations of historians of economic thought.

Authority versus freedom in Quesnay's thought

Although Quesnay is usually regarded alongside Adam Smith as one of the founders of economic liberalism, there are conflicting interpretations of the extent to which Quesnay was committed to the principle of economic freedom. This paper maintains that the source of ‘ambiguity’ in Quensays thought can be traced to his instrumentalist logic, which accommodates government action and government restraint - not as ideological axioms, but as utilitarian means to a specified end. It therefore helps to bring into sharper relief the essential differences between Quesnay and Smith regarding the relative position of freedom versus authority in an ideal economy.

Secondary Gains from Professionalization: A French Tale

From this same rostrum several years ago, outgoing president Bill Barber (1990, p. 110) said that presidential addresses tend to fall into one of two broad categories. Category I speeches typically survey the state of the art, identify promising directions for future research, and attempt to justify our scholarly existence to skeptics who doubt the value of studying the world of dead economists. Category II speeches draw their form and substance from the speakers particular research interests.