Cournot, Antoine-Augustin

Antoine-Augustin Cournot, (born August 28, 1801, Gray, France—died March 31, 1877, Paris), French economist and mathematician. Cournot was the first economist who, with competent knowledge of both subjects, endeavoured to apply mathematics to the treatment of economics. His main work in economics is Recherches sur les principes mathématiques de la théorie des richesses (1838; Researches into the Mathematical Principles of the Theory of Wealth). His primary concern was the analysis of partial market equilibrium, which he based on the assumption that participants in the process of exchange are either producers or merchants whose goal is the maximization of profit. He therefore ignored the concept of utility. His most important contributions were his discussions of supply-and-demand functions and of the establishment of equilibrium under conditions of monopoly, duopoly, and perfect competition; his analysis of the shifting of taxes, which he treated as changes in the cost of production; and his discussion of problems of international trade.

Cournot was the first economist to define and draw a demand curve to illustrate the relationship between price of and demand for a given item. He proceeded to show that the profit-maximizing output for a producer is reached when the marginal cost (the cost of producing one additional unit) equals the marginal revenue (the revenue realized from selling one additional unit). This work was lost until its rediscovery by Joan Robinson almost a century later. Moreover, Cournot introduced the idea of elasticity of demand, though he did not use that phrase.