Leon Walras y Augustin Cournot sobre la Regulación del Papel Moneda: Reglas versus discrecionalidad a finales del siglo diecinueve

This paper compares Leon Walras’ and Augustin Cournot’s views on monetary regulation. It shows that whereas Cournot believed discretionary monetary regulation to be convenient and acceptable, Walras held that the only acceptable monetary system is based exclusively on the stability of the value of money under a monetary rule following a strict equivalence between metallic reserves and a pure medium of exchange form of money. The paper also advances Cournot understood more clearly than Walras the evolution of the monetary system of their days because Walras was trying to guarantee the coherence of his pure theory with his applied theory, which made him unable to accept the evolution toward a monetary system based on fiat money.