'Our daily bread': Maurice Potron, from Catholicism to mathematical economics

Christian Bidard, Guido Erreygers and Wilfried Parys

The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2009, vol. 16, issue 1, 123-154

Abstract: Maurice Potron (1872-1942) is a French Jesuit and mathematician whose main source of inspiration in economics is the encyclical Rerum Novarum. With virtually no knowledge in economic theory, he wrote down a linear model of production in which he formalized the notions of just prices and just wages. As early as 1911, he used the Perron-Frobenius theorem to prove the existence of a positive solution and established a duality result between the quantity side and the price side of the model. He returned to economics in the 1930s, but in both periods he failed to make a lasting impression upon economists. JEL Classification Code: B3

Keywords: Catholic doctrine; duality; Hawkins-Simon; linear model of production; Perron-Frobenius; Potron; social question (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
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Working Paper: “Our daily bread”: Maurice Potron, from Catholicism to mathematical economics (2007)
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DOI: 10.1080/09672560802707456

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