The scope of the LeChatelier Principle

✍ Scribed by George M. Lady; James P. Quirk

• Book ID: 104080187
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 228 KB
• Volume: 381
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0378-4371
• DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2007.04.001

✦ Synopsis

LeChatelier [Comptes Rendus 99 (1884) 786; Ann. Mines 13 (2) (1888) 157] showed that a physical system's ''adjustment'' to a disturbance to its equilibrium tended to be smaller as constraints were added to the adjustment process. Samuelson [Foundations of Economic Analysis, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1947] applied this result to economics in the context of the comparative statics of the actions of individual agents characterized as the solutions to optimization problems; and later (1960), extended the application of the Principle to a stable, multi-market equilibrium and the case of all commodities gross substitutes [e.g., L. Metzler, Stability of multiple markets: the hicks conditions. Econometrica 13 (1945) 277-292]. Refinements and alternative routes of derivation have appeared in the literature since then, e.g., Silberberg [The LeChatelier Principle as a corollary to a generalized envelope theorem, J. Econ. Theory 3 (1971) 146-155; A revision of comparative statics methodology in economics, or, how to do comparative statics on the back of an envelope,