About Me

Francis Ysidro Edgeworth was born on February 8th, 1845. Edgeworth was an Irish economist renowned for his application of mathematics to economics. Edgeworth received his education from Trinity College in Dublin. He successfully completed his education in 1869. During the years of 1891 - 1922 he was Drummond Professor of Economics at Oxford University.

Although Edgeworth was well accomplished in mathematics his writing skills were subpar. Ironically, he was editor of the Economic Journal from (1891-1926) As a result, he had to heavily rely on mathematical models to get his point across. Edgeworth is well renowned for the generalized utility function, the indifference curve, and the contract curve which was published in his work Mathematical Physics.

 I only knew that Edgeworth pioneered the indifference curve from my microeconomics lecture. This concept can be used in class as when we have to decide on consumers preference, the indifference curve will help us choose which bundle would be optimal.

Edgeworth was also influential in the following theories: international trade, taxation, and monopoly.
Edgeworth seems to be a very influential economist to this day as his concepts are widely used by students and behavioral economists alike.

Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Francis-Ysidro-Edgeworth
http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Edgeworth.html
http://policonomics.com/lp-neoclassical-economics-francis-ysidro-edgeworth/

Comments

  1. Professor ArvanSeptember 8, 2017 at 10:15 AM

    We will be studying the Edgeworth Box as a simple way at getting to ideas about General Equilibrium. Edgeworth did fundamental work in that area.

    ReplyDelete

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