Léon WALRAS

Very important and last remaining archives in private hands, including autograph manuscripts, typescripts, corrected proofs, offprints, first editions, etc.

Exceptional collection of manuscript and printed archives – the last in private hands – of the founder of liberalism and modern economics, Léon Walras, preserved and annotated by his most prominent scholar William Jaffé. One of the 5 most important sets of personal archives belonging to Walras, considered by Schumpeter “the greatest of all economists”.

This collection of 42 important documents, including complete autograph manuscripts, corrected proofs, abundantly annotated offprints and expanded printed material, was given by his daughter Aline Walras and then Gaston Leduc to William Jaffé, who added his autograph notes to some of them and used them to edit the first translation of Éléments d’économie politique pure. 

Complete autograph manuscript dat­ed and signed of the article “Note sur la Solution du problème monétaire an­glo-indien”. 5 pages in black ink on a leaf and a bifolium; 4th page signed and dated: “Léon Walras Vers chez les Blancs sur Lausanne, 3 juillet 1887”. The 5th page was added later and includes numerous autograph corrections and added remarks.
◇ Autograph manuscript of the re­viewed version of the last page. A page dated and signed “Léon Walras Vers chez les Blancs sur Lausanne, juillet 1887.”
◇ Autograph manuscript with the economist's calculations, 4 pages on 2 leaves.
◇ Autograph manuscript of the English translation for the last part, a page writ­ten by Walras on the verso of an enve­lope addressed to him.
◇ Typescript of the transcription by William Jaffé, typed on 4 leaves of thin paper with corrections and crossed out sections by Jaffé.
◇ Note on the solution of the Anglo-in­dian monetary problem. Two copies of the proofs, one twice signed by Walras with numerous autograph corrections and notes by Walras.
◇ “Note sur la solution du problème monétaire anglo-indien”, offprint of the Revue d'économie politique, Novem­ber-December 1887. A sizable tear not without lack of text.
Unique set of manuscripts, typescripts, translations, corrected proofs and offprints of one of Léon Walras' first forays into international economics. This work helped the economist gain recognition among English-speaking peers at a time when their language was becoming the official scientific standard instead of French.

“L. Walras [was] one of the first to recommend the use of a price index to guide monetary policy. Its multi­ple standard provides the information that determines interventions intended to eliminate variations in the value of money. This multiple standard is noth­ing more than a price index used for specific purposes. The usefulness of such an index, which was far from uni­versally accepted at the time when L. Walras demonstrated its usefulness, is now recognized.” (Jacoud Gilles. “Sta­bilité monétaire et régulation étatique dans l'analyse de Léon Walras” in Revue économique)

Autograph manuscript signed, one a page written in black ink on a sheet of yellow lined paper and titled by the author: “Draft 8 – Preface for French edition 8 – Price Theory”; numerous erasures and corrections. At the top left of the sheet, in ballpoint pen, autograph signed: “For Bernadette Platte, Milton Friedman”.
Extremely rare autograph manuscript signed by the 1976 Nobel Prize winner, one of the most influential economists of the 20th century, whose entire archives are now kept at the Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Stanford University. The few Friedman manuscripts still in private hands are particularly desirable and sought-after. Important theoretical text of the first two paragraphs of the preface to Price and Economic Theory, first French translation of Price Theory, published in 1983 by Economica editions. Completed on September 7, 1983 at Stanford University, this original version in English is completely new. Price Theory, Friedman's major work (Chicago, Aldine Press, 1962) whose definitive version was published in 1976, the year Friedman won the Nobel, is a fundamental essay directly inspired by his lectures at Chicago University. For his first publication in France, seven years later, Friedman therefore undertook to compose a completely new preface intended for this public less naturally won over to monetarist ideas than the Americans.
Our manuscript, the final version of a text that required eight rewrites as evidenced by the exergue, still bears multiple modifications underlining the attention paid by Friedman to the reception of his work by the French readership. Spearhead of Ronald Reagan's economic policy, Friedman's theory of prices comes from a long tradition of French and Anglo-Saxon thinkers whom the economist takes care to quote in this manuscript: “From the French physiocrats and Adam Smith to Léon Walras and Alfred Marshall to Maurice Allais and Paul Samuelson, a body of theory has been elaborated and refined that essentially all economists accept and use in their analysis of the problems for which it is relevant”. As a connoisseur of the French spirit, Friedman thus insists on the connection between the economic liberalism of his famous “school of Chicago” and the philosophy of the Enlightenment, dear to the intelligentsia of the old continent. It is moreover in homage to this French critical spirit that he opens his preface with an ironic anecdote on the relativity of economic theories: “There is a long-standing myth that if two economists discuss any topic, they will have at least three opinions about it”. We note, however, that he replaces the real author of this trait, who is none other than Churchill, with an anonymous “long-standing myth”. The repetitions and redactions on our manuscript show Friedman's temptation to analyze the origin of this myth: “This myth rests like most myths” is crossed out and replaced by an irrevocable “Whatever small element of validity this myth may have with respect to some topics, it has none whatsoever with respect to the core of economics... price theory.”
The second paragraph of our manuscript is a promotion of his monetarist theories which, at the beginning of the 1980s, had just borne fruit: their application by the American Federal Reserve led to a sharp decline in inflation and a historic rise of the dollar. At the height of his influence, Friedman then saw his works, including Price Theory, republished, taught around the world and translated into several languages. He emphasizes here the central importance of his theory for understanding the world market: “For price theory seeks to understand how the actions of hundreds of millions of people spread around the surface of the globe interact through a market to determine the price of one good or service relates to another, the wages of one hour of labor relates to another, the cost of one unit of capital relates to another.” The continuation of the French preface, of more classical composition, is absent from our manuscript, which nevertheless includes a blank verso. This very elaborate introduction could thus turn out to be a late addition to the text initially planned, marking Friedman's effort to conquer the French capital, which had just, in 1981 elected its first socialist government since 1936.
Very important and extremely rare economic manuscript, unpublished in its original language, of the theorist who greatly influenced the financial policy of the United States and shaped the economy of the modern world.