General Equilibrium Theory and the Search of Its Empirical Endorsement : Henry Ludwell Moore

The article studies an attempt to make the Walrasian model subject to be empirically tested: the approach developed by the American Henry Moore, in the early twentieth century. Therefore, the paper examines the dissemination of Walrasian theory in the immediate post-Walras generation. The paper has a twofold perspective: 1) the analysis of the relationship between Walras and Moore, as shown mostly through their exchanged letters, in which we highlight Walras’s attempts to spread his theory in the New World and; 2) theoretical inquiry, exploring properly the work developed by the American. We conclude that the main analytical tool used by Moore was the treatment of data using a secular trend. As this trend was empirically derived, according to Moore, there was a transition from a purely rational construction to a real and dynamic one. We show that, for Moore, this transition from a static analysis to a dynamic analysis was essentially related to the empirical basis of the theory. Moore also tried to demonstrate that the formulation of the general moving equilibrium transformed the Walrasian equations in a way that it could be used to test theories about the distribution of income among workers