The Potentials and Limits of Economic Analysis: The Contributions of Kenneth J. Arrow

It is not difficult to detect in these revealing lines a self-portrait of their author. Keynes used them, however, as a spring board for his analysis of Marshall’s ‘double nature’. Surely many economists (including perhaps our protagonist) would balk at the incongruity of a comparison between Arrow and Marshall. We are, of course, referring to the ‘Vision’ or Weltanschauung of the economists and not to their methods or products.1 Moreover, it is probably futile to compare the intellectual make-up of economists primarily, but not only, because of differences in historical setting as well as cultural, educational, genetic, and psychological influences. However different they are, neither Marshall nor Arrow (and for that matter, not even Keynes) can be credited with all of Keynes’s ‘ideal many-sidedness’, though each possesses the quality albeit in different configurations.