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RESEARCH PRODUCT

L'originalité de juglar

subject

description

This is a version, slightly corrected in 2011 with regard to form, of a thèse complémentaire defended at the University of Paris in March 1966 (at the time, writing a "complementary thesis" in a domain adjacent to, but distinct from, economics proper was a requirement added to the doctorate in economics for participating in the national competition to become a university professor in economics). The subject of the thesis, supposedly in the domain of economic history, had been proposed by Professor Jean Lhomme. The contribution of Clément Juglar (1819-1905), whose name has remained associated with the business cycle, was deemed particularly important and original by Joseph Schumpeter in his History of Economic Analysis, published in 1954. Two sets of archives, one remained in the family of Juglar, the other located at the Institut Français d'Histoire Sociale were waiting to be exploited. The thesis reports some findings obtained from these archives and provides information on Juglar's publications and career. It starts with an extended discussion of the notion of originality in a discipline such as economics. This leads to a separate discussion of the objective and the subjective originality of Juglar. One of the results of the research is the discovery that two aspects of his life experience probably played a determining role in the original way in which he approached "commercial crises": his early training as a medical doctor and his activity as a dedicated speculator on the stock exchange.