'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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