Abstract
Wicksell discussed in his 1893 book Value, capital and rent, as part of a critical comment on Launhardt and Jevons, conditions for consistent aggregation. He argued that Jevons’s trading body concept was only valid if identical linear marginal utility functions (with ensuing parallel Engel lines for all individuals) could be assumed in general, which he regarded as unrealistic. Wicksell preferred Walras’s notion of market excess aggregate demand functions, which are function of prices only. Such functions would not be affected by aggregation problems, if only disequilibrium transactions were assumed away. The paper also addresses Wicksell’s position concerning the so-called “Cournot problem” that the general equilibrium system may not be able to provide precise numerical answers because of computation and information problems. Finally, Wicksell's notion of the representative agent in his discussion of the savings function, and its compatibility with his criticism of the trading body concept, is considered.
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