Dear Guy, Abject apologies. You are correct: in my analysis the seminal
contribution of Dupuit does not appear.  This is not because I do not
acknowledge his contribution.  He wrote 10 years before Gossen (whom
nobody read for twenty years) and his analysis is crisp and clear and he
created a whole new theory in order to answer a specific problem.

In a review (History of Economic Ideas, Volume 14, Number 2, pp.147-151)
of Richard van der Berg's edition of A.N. Isnard, I even suggested that
Richard should have included Isnard's Mémoire “on the construction and
maintenance of roads and navigable channels”, (Traité des richesses, 1781,
I, pp. 116-137) - which was an extract of an earlier memoire to the
Academy of Châlons (1778) - in order for the reader to be able to make the
comparison with "the more famous Ponts et Chaussées engineer Jules
Dupuit". Indeed, nine years ago I did a very unscientific thing: I wrote a
5 star review on Hebert & Ekelund's book on Dupuit in Amazon.com. So
fascinated was I by their analysis.

But history has many cunning passages, contrived corridors and the
dissemination of ideas meant that the notion of diminishing marginal
utility went through the marginalist revolution, even though you could
argue that the concept was around in the British anti-ricardians.  So both
Bernoulli and Dupuit were "rediscovered". The first through a translation
in Econometrica in 1954 and an inclusion in Baumol and Goldfeld's
anthology in 1968, and Dupuit became widely and justly known by his
inclusion in the AEA Readings in Public Finance.

This, of course, does not slight Dupuit's contribution. This is enough
contrition, I hope. Zu Canossa, gehe ich nicht.

Nicholas Theocarakis