Walker Yankee Scientist I am trying to write an article on Amasa Walker (1799-1875). I will much appreciate if anybody can help with anything about his work. Please send your input to [1][log in to unmask] Walkers Science of Wealth (1865) seems to be to have been a clear, consistent, complete and compact exposition of what economics was supposed to be: the science of exchange as per Whately (1832). Walker wrote in the 1866 edition of Science of Wealth: Exchange is that agency which brings a man what he wants for what he does not want, which furnishes gratification for his desires out of objects which are adapted to gratify few or none of his desires. (Page 77). He thinks that its office is the creation and apportionment of wealth. (Page 78). He stated: The whole interest of commerce is now the inalienable ally of peace. It has not been found sufficient, thus far, to prevent all wars. But it enters into negotiations, tempers grievances, and delays violence. (Page 84). The implications of these statements stab at the heart of the dereliction of the mainstream. My thesis is that this Yankee Scientist remains the last great genuine scientist of [exchange-based] wealth, and our job is to start from where he left it. We need to rescue economics from the crippling attack on it that came shortly after Walkers book was published. Europe fell into the traps of the trivial matter of allocation of existing wealth under the intoxicating lure of Game Boy like child-play of optimization. Jevons, Walras and Pareto destroyed economic science and degraded it into a chapter of biology where an isolated mouse-like man equates his production with his consumption of n different things, and never does anything involving exchange. The Walrasian model has absolutely no exchange: no buying, no selling, no intermediation, no entrepreneurship, no payment, no money, no institutions and no evolution. The micro-macro incompatibility and the divorce between trade and money happened in Europe, especially as Marshall began the indiscipline of partial equilibrium analysis that disintegrated economics into a shouting match between incompletely formed incompatible compartments. Walker once shone brightly at Harvard, but his departure plunged Harvard in utter darkness while Marshalls disciples erected a temple in Chicago to ruin economics beyond salvage. Sadly, the subjectivist (Austrian School) tradition lacked formal modeling skills to carry on a fruitful study of exchange by the entrepreneurial pursuits verbally narrated by Menger, Mises and Kirzner, frequently falling into semantic traps. I am not accusing Walker of using rigorous formal models, but he surely is the only author known to me who provided a complete description of indirect exchange, which should occupy 99% of economic analysis. I am certain that Smith, Say, Ricardo, Marx, Mill and Jevons did not understand indirect exchange and hence were very unclear about the nature of exchange and consequently the role of money in market clearing. The entire misadventure of macroeconomics of Say, Keynes, Friedman and Lucas could be thrown away without any loss if we just read Walker attentively. We need economic science, not micro or macro; we need neither trade without money nor money without trade. Walker can get us started with clarity, consistency, completeness and compactness. Mohammad Gani References Walker, Amasa (1866): The science of wealth: A manual of political economy. Embracing the laws of trade, currency, and finance. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company. Whately, Ricahrd (1832): Introductory Lectures on Political Economy. Available from [2]http://www.econolib.org/whately through the courtesy of Library of Economics and Liberty Mohammad Gani (October 2004): Money in Market Clearing found at http://ideas.repec.org/p/wpa/wuwpma/0410009.html References 1. mailto:[log in to unmask] 2. http://www.econolib.org/whately