The term "pure economics"

In this earlier blog post, I used the term pure economics. Admittedly, I did not make it explicit as to what I was referring to when I used the term. Nevertheless, I trust the reader could follow my argument.

Associated with the term, pure economics, is the French economist, Léon Walras. In fact, arguably his most important work is titled: Elements of Pure Economics. He also used the terms applied economics and social economics and made distinctions between each of them.

According to Wikipedia (forgive me on this one, I do not have access to the actual source):

Léon Walras planned to organize his main work into volumes on "pure," "applied," and "social" economics. Jaffé (1983) describes Walras's plan as involving making a distinction between that which is true, is useful, and is just. In using the term true, Walras referred to propositions that necessarily followed from the nature of things. Pure economics then involves pure logic. Applied economics involves examining ways to achieve practical goals and requires the making judgments about whether or not the logic of pure economics was relevant to the real world. Social economics also presumed pure economics, but dealt with a different range of questions than did applied economics.

Now, when I used the term, I did so much in the same way as did Léon Walras. Interestingly, Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist, used the term in a similar vain.

To go over what I said earlier, pure economics involves developing an axiomatic system and as long as that system has a logical development, it holds true. It holds true in itself, but may, however, not be true about the real world. What we observe may be on the contrary to or unexplained by the implications asserted by the axiomatic system. In this way, pure economics - an axiomatic system - only tells us that an economy with such and such properties, subsequently has such and such other properties. All propositions about the real world, belong to applied economics, or, econometrics. Again, pure economics illustrates while econometrics discovers.

Having mentioned Léon Walras, it's probably a good time to say that his name is pronoucned with the letter 's'. Some have claimed that his name is pronounced 'Val-rah' or 'Wal-rah', but both instances are incorrect.

The source that tells me that this is a footnote to the translator's forward of Elements of Pure Economics! The footnote says:

I was told by Walras's daughter, the late Mlle Aline Walras, that the final s is sounded in the correct pronunciation of the name.

You simply never know what you'll find out when reading a book!