Of the three founders of marginalism, Marie-Esprit-Leon Walras (1834-1910) was the only one to create general equilibrium theory.

He owed his vocation as an economist and the foundations of his economic and social thought to his father. In this chapter, we will address successively his itinerary from Paris to Lausanne, the components of his “political and social economy” and his methodology, the con­tent of the pure economics in the Elements d’economie politique pure, and then his applied and social economics. The chapter concludes on Walras’s relationship with the so-called Lausanne School.

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