Lectures on the Mathematical Method in Analytical Economics
Jacob T. Schwartz
Gordon and Breach
Mathematical economics has made immense technical progress in 
the last twenty years. Unfortunately, it has to a too large extent 
remained isolated within the larger historical context of economic 
debate, somehow ignoring rather than clarifying the great issues 
around which this debate has raged; like a delicate precision clock- 
work which the economist admires, as in a jeweler's window, before 
setting back to serious work with pick and shovel. For this reason 
I have tried, in the lectures from which the present volume is taken, 
to direct attention particularly to these issues, and have attempted 
to put economics in the foreground and mathematics together with 
mathematical rigor in the background-although, alas, mathematics 
in doing its good services has a way of calling attention to itself. 
Where perfect generality has meant relative vagueness of results, 
while reasonable assumptions have led to suggestive conclusions, 
I have, in consequence, preferred to make rather than to omit these 
assumptions.