Is Competition Necessarily Efficient? An Answer through the History of Neoclassical Theory

Abstract

The paper challenges the idea that neoclassical economics has demonstrated competition’s efficiency. It does so by retracing the history of Pareto’s criterion (in general equilibrium and in modern neoclassical economics), showing that it is only after a few shifts and transformations that it became an “efficiency” criterion while it was never called that in Pareto’s work. Widespread belief that competition is efficient is rather the result of ideology than of rigorous neoclassical demonstration. JEL Classification: B13, B21, P16