Thinking Outside the Box: Edgeworth, Pareto and the Early History of the Box Diagram

This study enhances McLure (2017) by considering the significance Edgeworth’s reciprocal demand curves to the early history of the Edgeworth box. In short, it clarifies Edgeworth’s and Pareto’s respective contributions to the development the Edgeworth box diagram by establishing the relationship between the ‘trade’ representations of Edgeworth’s Figures 1 and 5 and the associated ‘allocation’ representations of those two diagrams. A reconstruction of Edgeworth’s Figure 1 is also provided to make the implicit aspects of his treatment of production explicit. A new early history of the Edgeworth box diagram is also presented.