Jules Dupuit
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Arsène Jules Étienne Juvenel Dupuit (18 May 1804 – 5 September 1866) was an Italian-born French
civil engineer A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering – the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructure while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing ...
and economist. He was born in Fossano, Italy then under the rule of
Napoleon Bonaparte Napoleon Bonaparte ; it, Napoleone Bonaparte, ; co, Napulione Buonaparte. (born Napoleone Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French military commander and political leader who ...
. At the age of ten he emigrated to France with his family where he studied in Versailles — winning a Physics prize at graduation. He then studied in the École Polytechnique as a civil engineer. He gradually took on more responsibility in various regional posts. He received a Légion d'honneur in 1843 for his work on the French road system, and shortly after moved to Paris. He also studied flood management in 1848 and supervised the construction of the Paris
sewer system Sewerage (or sewage system) is the infrastructure that conveys sewage or surface runoff (stormwater, meltwater, rainwater) using sewers. It encompasses components such as receiving drains, manholes, pumping stations, storm overflows, and scr ...
. He died in Paris. Engineering questions led to his interest in economics, a subject in which he was self-taught. His 1844 article was concerned with deciding the optimum toll for a bridge. It was here that he introduced his curve of diminishing marginal utility. As the quantity of a good consumed rises, the
marginal utility In economics, utility is the satisfaction or benefit derived by consuming a product. The marginal utility of a Goods (economics), good or Service (economics), service describes how much pleasure or satisfaction is gained by consumers as a result o ...
of the good declines for the user. So the lower the toll (lower marginal utility), the more people who would use the bridge (higher consumption). Conversely as the quantity rises (people allowed on the bridge), the willingness of a person to pay for that good (the price) declines. Thus, the concept of diminishing marginal utility should translate itself into a downward-sloping demand function. In this way he identified the demand curve as the marginal utility curve. This was the first time an economist had put forward a theory of demand derived from marginal utility. Although not the first time that the demand curve had been drawn, it was the first time that it had been proved rather than asserted. Dupuit, however, did not include a supply curve in his theory. Dupuit went on to define "relative utility" as the area under the demand/marginal utility curve above the price and used it as a measure of the welfare effects of different prices – concluding that public welfare is maximized when the price (or bridge toll) is zero. This was later known as
Marshall's Marshalls is an American chain of off-price department stores owned by TJX Companies. Marshalls has over 1,000 American stores, including larger stores named Marshalls Mega Store, covering 42 states and Puerto Rico, and 61 stores in Canada. ...
"
consumer surplus In mainstream economics, economic surplus, also known as total welfare or total social welfare or Marshallian surplus (after Alfred Marshall), is either of two related quantities: * Consumer surplus, or consumers' surplus, is the monetary gain ...
". Dupuit's reputation as an economist does not rest on his advocacy of laissez-faire economics (he wrote "Commercial Freedom" in 1861) but on frequent contributions to periodicals. Wanting to evaluate the net economic benefit of public services, Dupuit analysed capacities for economic development, and attempted to construct a framework for utility theory and measuring the prosperity derived with public works. He also wrote on monopoly and price discrimination. Dupuit also considered the groundwater flow equation, which governs the flow of groundwater. He assumed that the equation could be simplified for
analytical solution Generally speaking, analytic (from el, ἀναλυτικός, ''analytikos'') refers to the "having the ability to analyze" or "division into elements or principles". Analytic or analytical can also have the following meanings: Chemistry * A ...
s by assuming that groundwater is hydrostatic and flows horizontally. This assumption is regularly used today, and is known by hydrogeologists as the
Dupuit assumption Arsène Jules Étienne Juvenel Dupuit (18 May 1804 – 5 September 1866) was an Italian-born French civil engineer and economist. He was born in Fossano, Italy then under the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte. At the age of ten he emigrated to France ...
.


See also

*
Robert Ekelund Robert Burton Ekelund Jr. (born 1940) is an American economist. Education Originally from Galveston, Texas, Ekelund attended St. Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas, earning his BBA in economics in 1962 and his MA in economics and histo ...


References

* Hager, W.H. (2004): ''Jules Dupuit—Eminent Hydraulic Engineer''. Journal of Hydraulic Engineering, Volume 130, Issue 9, pp. 843–848. *Dupuit, Arsène Jules Étienne Juvénal (1844): ''De la mesure de l’utilité des travaux publics'', Annales des ponts et chaussées, Second series, 8. **Translated by R.H. Barback as ''On the measurement of the utility of public works'', International Economic Papers, 1952, 2, 83–110 **reprinted in: Kenneth J. Arrow and Tibor Scitovsky, eds., Readings in welfare economics (Richard D. Irwin, Homewood, IL, 1969), 255–283. *Robert Ekelund and Robert F. Hébert: ''Secret Origins of Modern Microeconomics: Dupuit and the Engineers'' University of Chicago Press, 1999.


External links


Biography of Jules Dupuit
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dupuit, Jules French chief executives École Polytechnique alumni École des Ponts ParisTech alumni Corps des ponts 1804 births 1866 deaths French civil engineers French economists French hydrologists 19th-century French businesspeople