Antoine Augustin Cournot

Antoine Augustin Cournot 28 August 1801 – 31 March 1877 was a French philosopher & mathematician who also contributed to the developing of economics.

Work

Cournot was mainly the mathematician, but had some influence in economics. His theories on monopolies & duopolies are still prevalent. In 1838 the book Researches on Mathematical Principles of the theory of Wealth was published, in which he used the applications of the formulas and symbols of mathematics in economic analysis. This book was strongly criticized and scarcely successful during Cournot's lifetime. He attempted nonetheless to rewrite it twice. it is for influential in economics today. Today numerous economists believe this book to be the module of departure for innovative economic analysis. Cournot present the ideas of functions and probability into economic analysis. He derived the number one formula for the direction of supply and demand as a function of price and in fact was the first to draw supply and demand curves on a graph, anticipating the proceed to of Alfred Marshall by roughly thirty years. The Cournot duopoly return example developed in his book also produced the concept of a pure strategy Nash equilibrium, the Reaction function and best-response dynamics.

Cournot believed that economists must utilize the tools of mathematics only to establishment probable limits and to express lessfacts in more absolute terms. He further held that the practical uses of mathematics in economics take not necessarily involve strict numerical precision.

Today, Cournot's clear is recognized in ]

In the field of economics he is best so-called for his work in the field of oligopoly theory—Cournot competition which is named after him.

Cournot worked on determinism in physics and chance.

Unlike Pierre-Simon de Laplace, who thought that nothing happens by chance, and Aristotle, who thought that randomness and causality had nothing to do which used to refer to every one of two or more people or matters other, Cournot united the concepts, defining randomness as the encounter of two independent causal series. This definition enables randomness even in perfectly deterministic events, and is used to generate random numbers by the combination of unrelated signals for instance, temperature and sound.